Of legacies and changing electoral realities in old family strongholds

May For the first time in 25 years, the Amethi seat in Uttar Pradesh will not see a member of the NehruGandhi family contesting a Lok Sabha election, nor will Baghpat have a candidate from the family of former prime minister Charan Singh.

- ARCHIS MOHAN

The contest for Jharkhand's Hazaribagh will not feature either Yashwant Sinha or his son Jayant, again a first in a quarter of a century, nor did the electorate of UP's Pilibhit have in their midst either Maneka Gandhi or son Varun canvassing for votes, a first in over three decades.

While Jayant Sinha and Varun Gandhi, both Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members in the outgoing Lok Sabha, were left with little choice, the decisions of the Congress' Rahul Gandhi and the Rashtriya Lok Dal's Jayant Chaudhary, are voluntary. In 2019, Rahul Gandhi lost Amethi to the BJP's Smriti Irani by nearly 6 per cent votes, a small margin in the context of a Lok Sabha election. For Jayant Chaudhary, the margin of loss from Baghpat to the BJP's Satyapal Singh was a mere 2.25 per cent.

But some others have responded differently. In 2019, Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh CM, Digivijaya Singh, had suffered a massive defeat in Bhopal by 26 per cent votes -to the BJP's Pragya Thakur. He is back in the electoral battle from Rajgarh, a family stronghold that Digvijaya and his brother Lakshman Singh have between them selves represented in the Lok Sabha on seven occasions. But the BJP's Rodmal Nagar has won the seat comfortably in the last two elections, including by 34 per cent in 2019.