From the Urdu Press: ‘In Rae Bareli, Amethi, Congress takes charge of story’, ‘Muslim quota needed on backwardness’

By the end of polling on Tuesday, covering 93 constituencies across 11 states and UTs, more than half of the country’s total seats would have wrapped up polling. Fears of “change in the Constitution” and “reservation quotas” remained the main theme in this phase, whose seats were swept by the BJP in the 2019 polls. The twin issues also dominated the coverage of the Urdu dailies over the week, which also captured the suspense and drama surrounding the declaration of Congress candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli, which went down to the wire.

Commenting on the Congress’s decision to field Rahul Gandhi from the Rae Bareli seat and veteran party worker and Gandhi family loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma from the Amethi constituency, the New Delhi edition of Inquilab, in its editorial on May 4, notes that the party did so on the very last day of filing of nominations. With all eyes were on these Uttar Pradesh seats, known as traditional Gandhi family bastions, it says. “A range of speculations were doing the rounds about their candidates. It was claimed that while Rahul will again contest from Amethi (where he lost in 2019 to BJP leader and Union minister Smriti Irani), Priyanka Gandhi will be fielded from their mother Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli seat.”

The editorial points out that there was also buzz about reasons behind the delay in the Congress naming candidates from the two high-profile seats. “It was claimed that both Rahul and Priyanka were not willing to contest. Rahul was said to be in a fix since he is also fighting from Kerala’s Wayanad seat and that, in the event of a win from both seats, it would be difficult for him to leave one of them,” the edit says, adding that the two Gandhi siblings were also said to be reluctant to