On Saturday, Congress released its fourth list of 46 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai will contest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi. It is his third Lok Sabha election contest against the BJP stalwart. On March 2, the BJP had announced PM Modi’s name in its first list of 194 candidates.
PM Modi had defeated his nearest rival Shalini Yadav of Samajwadi Party by 4.80 lakh votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Rai had bagged 1,52,548 votes and secured the third spot.
He had got a vote share of 14.38 % against PM Modi’s vote share of a staggering 63.62 %. In the 2014 elections, Rai had also secured the third spot when PM Modi had defeated Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal from the holy city.
The other candidates announced by Congress from Uttar Pradesh included Imran Masood (Saharanpur), Danish Ali (Amroha), Akhilesh Pratap Singh (Deoria) and Tanuj Punia (Barabanki). In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the had won just one seat, that of Sonia Gandhi from Raebareli.
The Congress also announced the candidates from Madhya Pradesh. Former chief minister Digvijaya Singh has been fielded from Rajgarh. Singh had contested the 2019 elections from Bhopal, wherein he had lost to Pragya Thakur of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Besides Singh, the party fielded former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria from Ratlam constituency.
In Tamil Nadu, the Congress has fielded Karti Chidambaram from Sivaganga once again. The constituency was once represented by his father P Chidambaram. The party also fielded Manickam Tagore from Virudhnagar. Tamil Nadu, with 39 seats in the Lok Sabha, will vote in the first phase on April 19.
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