Congress camps blow hot and cold about Gandhis contesting

With just a few more days remaining for the closing of nominations for the Amethi and Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seats, the Congress camp has started blowing hot and cold on the prospects of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra contesting from these family seats. Even as the UP Congress and AICC election committees had recommended for the two contesting these seats and left it to the family to take the final call, and party president Mallikarjun Kharge to make the announcement about the decision, some persons in the Priyanka camp have now started making it a point to make known the merits of her not contesting. Some Rahul Gandhi supporters have started whispering the case for him skirting the Amethi seat and moving to Rae Bareli "if at all it is important" for him to contest from a second seat after Wayanad.

However, there is also a section in the party which feels that if Gandhi avoids Amethi for Rae Bareli, it would amount to him "fleeing twice", from the seat he lost, therefore, making it important he fight to wrest the seat. Though there has been talk of Priyanka contesting from Rae Bareli after her mother Sonia Gandhi moved from there to the Rajya Sabha, some of her supporters now feel that after the failure of Priyanka's "Mission UP" in 2022, it is time to re-build her political career than getting into any more risky missions. Of late, she has been trying to re-position herself as the party's 'campaigner for all elections'. While the Congress circles are awaiting the final decision of the Gandhi family on the siblings', so far only the son-in-law, Robert Vadra, has been upfront with his readiness to fight from Amethi or Rae Bareli.