Amethi is one of the important seats not only in Uttar Pradesh but in India. The seat catches attention nationwide. The seat has the privilege of electing the Prime Minister beside the Leader of the Opposition. The seat consists of 5 Assembly seats. Four Assembly seats lie in Amethi district while the rest fifth one is in Rae Bareli district. In the 2022 Assembly elections, three seats were won by the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), while two seats were by the Samajwadi Party (SP). The seat has the privilege of electing four members of the Gandhi family, the first family of the Congress party. The Congress party now has no representation from the five Assembly seats within the Amethi Lok Sabha seat.
Three members of the Gandhi family lost their seats till now. In 1977, Sanjay Gandhi lost his seat at the hands of Ravindra Pratap Singh of the Janta Party. The margin of defeat of Sanjay Gandhi was huge. Sanjay Gandhi lost the election by nearly 76000 votes, which was 26 per cent of the polled votes. In 1980, Sanjay Gandhi won the seat. The seat has the distinction of a direct contest between two members of the Gandhi family. In 1984, Maneka Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi’s widow, locked horns with Rajiv Gandhi on this seat. Maneka Gandhi was the second member of the family to lose the seat.
From 1980 till 1998, the Congress party won the seat without any break. In the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, Rajiv Gandhi massively defeated the Janta Dal candidate Mr Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1998, Sanjay Sinh of the BJP defeated the Congress party candidate Capt Satish Sharma. In order to retain her familiar seat, Sonia Gandhi herself contested the seat in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls. In 1999, Sonia Gandhi contested from two seats. These seats were her familiar seats, Amethi and Bellary Lok Sabha’s seats in Karnataka. Sonia Gandhi retained Amethi and resigned from Bellary after registering a win in both seats. In 2004, Sonia Gandhi put her candidature from Rae Bareli, and her son Rahul Gandhi got a Congress party nomination from Amethi. He won the seat in 2004, 2009, and 2014. In the 2019 LS poll, Smriti Irani of BJP defeated Rahul Gandhi in the last 2019 LS polls. Rahul Gandhi sensed his defeat priority and put his nomination from the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in Kerala too. Rahul Gandhi lost in Amethi but won from Wayanad. But in the 2022 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress party performed poorly on all five Assembly seats in Amethi.
In the 2022 Assembly elections of five Assembly seats, the Congress party saved its deposit on only one seat of Jagdishpur. If we count the vote share of the Congress party on all five ACs within the Amethi Lok Sabha seat, then the Congress party vote share was only 14.28. The Congress party even forfeited its deposit as a result of the ACs of the Amethi LS seat in the 2022 UP Assembly elections. In Assembly elections in 2022, the BJP remained number one in votes and got 418700 votes. The Samajwadi Party was on second spot with 352475 votes. The Congress party got only 142952 votes.
The Congress party is yet to announce its candidates from Amethi and Rae Bareli LS seats for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. It is speculated that after Wayanad Lok Sabha polls, the Congress party will make its decision on Amethi Lok Sabha’s seat. Wayanad’s seat is slated to be voted on on April 26. If the Congress party is suspected of Rahul Gandhi’s winning from Wayanad, then Rahul Gandhi may also file his nomination from Amethi. In UP, the Congress party had announced all candidates but three. For Amethi’s seat, the last date for the nomination is May 3, which is much ahead of the voting in Wayanad. So, the Amethi Lok Sabha seat still has many new twists likely to come.
