Congress Relies On Samajwadi Party To Ensure Rahul Gandhi's Victory In Rae Bareli

On Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav's direction to "fight the polls as if your own party is in the fray," the party workers are working enthusiastically for the Congress candidate in Rae Bareli.

Apart from Kerala's Wayanad, Rahul Gandhi is also contesting for the Rae Bareli seat, which his mother Sonia Gandhi has been winning since 2004. Plenty of red caps (SP workers) were seen in his election rallies.

Rae Bareli Parliamentary Constituency has five Assembly segments -- Bachhrawanm, Harchandpur, Rae Bareli, Unchahar and Sareni, of which three were won by the SP in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

While BJP won only two, it now has the support of three MLAs as Unchahar SP MLA Manoj Kumar Pandey has been siding with the BJP since the Rajya Sabha elections in the state earlier this year.

However, SP's Rae Bareli district president Virendra Yadav believes that the SP-Congress alliance now is much stronger than the 2017 alliance as "there was growing coordination among the workers and leaders of both parties."

Congress leader Anshu Awasthi, who is involved in media publicity, expressed that SP workers in Rae Bareli are enthusiastic because of "a close, familial and very emotional attachment with the Gandhi family."

"A joint rally is scheduled to take place here in which Rahul Gandhi ji and Akhilesh Yadav ji will come which would further demonstrate the strength of this alliance," SP's former district president Naresh Yadav said.

The polling in Kannauj, from where Akhilesh Yadav is contesting, happened yesterday (13 May), so he might now focus on Rae Bareli, which is set to got to polls on 20 May in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections.