Fate of Rahul, Tharoor, Om Birla, Hema Malini to be decided today
NEW DELHI: Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor, and actor-turned-politician Arun Govil are among the key candidates in the fray for the second phase of the Lok Sabha polls with BJP’s Hema Malini, Om Birla and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat seeking a hat-trick of wins from their respective constituencies.
In the second phase of Lok Sabha polls on Friday, polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, seven in Madhya Pradesh, five each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
Gandhi is the sitting MP from Wayanad in Kerala and is seeking re-election. He is pitted against CPI’s Annie Raja and BJP’s K Surendran. In the 2019 election, Gandhi secured victory by a substantial margin of more than 7 lakh votes against his closest rival, CPI’s P P Suneer.
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor is hoping to retain the Thiruvananthapuram seat for the fourth time. He is pitted against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar from the BJP and CPI’s Pannyan Raveendran.
Malini, who has represented the Mathura constituency since 2014, is contesting against Congress’ Mukesh Dhangar while Om Birla, a two-time MP from Kota, is facing Prahlad Gunjal from the Congress party.
Union minister Shekhawat is eyeing a third win from the Jodhpur seat while Congress candidate Karan Singh Uchiyarda would look to put a spanner in the works of the BJP candidate.
The contest for the Alappuzha seat in Kerala has turned into a prestige battle for the Congress with AICC general secretary Venugopal’s return to the Lok Sabha poll fray after 2014 as the party looks to wrest the only seat it lost to the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front in its landslide 19-1 victory in Kerala in the 2019 polls.
Venugopal has not lost any major election in his career. He won the Alappuzha Assembly seat thrice in a row in 1996, 2001, and 2006 and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Alappuzha in 2009 and 2014.
In 2019, Venugopal did not contest after the party elevated him to the post of the AICC general secretary.