84% votes for Rajiv Gandhi in 1981 Congress’s best Amethi win, 1977 loss its worst

After much suspense, the Congress finally announced its candidates for the traditional Nehru-Gandhi seats of Amethi and Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh on Friday, the list date for filing nominations. While there was buzz that siblings Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi would contest from the two seats, eventually while Rahul moved to Rae Bareli, Priyanka opted out.

In Amethi, the Congress has fielded 63-year-old Kishori Lal Sharma, a close Gandhi family aide going back to the time of Rajiv Gandhi. This makes Sharma only the fifth non-Gandhi family candidate from Amethi.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s Smriti Irani defeated the then Amethi MP Rahul to become only the third non-Congress MP to represent the seat since it came into existence in 1967. Prior to that, the BJP had won the seat just once, in 1998, when its candidate Sanjay Singh, a former Congress leader, had clinched the poll.

The other non-Congress MP to have got elected from Amethi was the Janata Party’s Ravindra Pratap Singh, who won in the post-Emergency elections of 1977.

The Congress has won Amethi 11 times in the 14 Lok Sabha elections held for the seat till date. The first Congress candidate to win from Amethi was V D Bajpai in 1967, and then again in 1971. In 1977, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s younger son Sanjay Gandhi contested the seat for the first time, but lost. In 1980 though, Sanjay won his first Lok Sabha election from the seat. After he died months later, his elder brother Rajiv Gandhi won the seat in a bypoll.

Rajiv went on to clinch the Amethi constituency for three consecutive terms. After he was assassinated in 1991, Satish Sharma, a Gandhi family loyalist, took over the seat. He won it in the 1991 bypoll and the 1996 Lok Sabha elections,