Wayanad Lok Sabha elections 2024: K Surendran says Rahul Gandhi will meet same fate as Amethi
Kerala BJP president K Surendran, who has been pitted against Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad in the upcoming Lok Sabha election, said that the Congress leader will face the ‘same outcome’ as Amethi where he lost in 2019 against Union minister Smriti Irani.
On Sunday, the BJP announced Surendran’s candidacy from the Wayanad constituency, which is a Congress stronghold since 2009. His name was declared along with other candidates such as actor Kangana Ranaut, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, BJP MP Maneka Gandhi, industrialist and former Congress MP Naveen Jindal, and others.
BJP on Sunday released the names of the candidates for the Lok Sabha seats of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Rajasthan, Haryana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Sikkim, Telangana, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.
Besides Surendran and Gandhi, CPI’s Annie Raja is the candidate of the state’s ruling Left in the constituency.
“The central leadership has entrusted me with a responsibility. They have asked to take up the fight in Wayanad constituency. The people of Wayanad will definitely ask why the senior leaders of INDIA alliance are contesting each other in the same constituency,” Surendran told news agency PTI.
Surendran, the face of the saffron party’s fierce agitations against the entry of young women into Sabarimala years ago, has been serving as the president of the state unit of the BJP since 2020.
In the 2019 general elections, Surendran secured third place in the Pathanamthitta constituency, trailing behind the Congress and the Left parties. Before that, he narrowly lost the 2016 assembly polls in Manjeswaram by a margin of just 89 votes. Additionally, he contested a bypoll in 2019 but was unsuccessful.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi had won from Wayanad by defeating Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate PP Suneer by a margin of over 4.31 lakh votes. An ally of the BJP, Bharath Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), had fielded its chief Thushar Vellappally, who could get only 78,816 votes from Wayanad.
Kerala, the state that sends 20 members to the Lok Sabha, will vote in the second phase on April 26. The counting of votes will take place on June 4.
