A query that has doubtlessly visited many minds going into the Lok Sabha elections, the dates for which will likely be notified on Saturday, is whether or not the Gandhis ought to contest Amethi and Raebareli, two constituencies that have been lengthy thought-about Congress “pocket boroughs”. Former Congress nationwide president Sonia Gandhi, who was the sitting MP from Raebareli within the Lok Sabha, resigned her membership of the Decrease Home and entered the Rajya Sabha, as an alternative, from Jaipur earlier this 12 months, probably making method for her son Rahul Gandhi or daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to be elected from the occasion stronghold.
Saying her choice to step away on grounds of age and failing well being in a heartfelt open letter to the folks of Raebareli, Sonia invoked the sturdy ties that the Nehru-Gandhi household has had with the constituency and urged voters to repose their religion within the Congress.
Amid buzz that Rahul would possibly enter the fray for the Lok Sabha this time from two seats — Wayanad in Kerala that he represents at present within the Decrease Home and Amethi, the Congress named him from the constituency mendacity south of the Vindhyas in its first listing for the Lok Sabha elections however intriguingly didn’t announce its picks for Amethi and Raebareli.
Even in its second listing, which was unveiled lately, the grand previous occasion skipped point out of its picks from these two seats.
So, even because the suspense over the Congress’s alternative of candidates for these two constituencies persists, ABP-CVoter requested the folks if Rahul and Priyanka ought to contest Amethi and Raebareli in a current survey.
On whether or not the Gandhi siblings ought to be on the Congress tickets for these two seats, a major proportion of the respondents, comprising each Opposition and NDA voters, answered within the affirmative.
Requested if Rahul must also contest Amethi, 58.2 per cent of Opposition voters mentioned ‘sure’ whereas 18.9 per cent responded within the unfavorable. Nevertheless, the NDA voters got here up with a combined response to the identical query, with 39.9 per cent saying ‘sure’ and 33 per cent replied within the unfavorable.
On whether or not Priyanka ought to make her electoral debut from Raebareli, as many as 62.9 per cent of Opposition respondents responded within the affirmative whereas 15.4 per cent mentioned ‘no’. Amongst NDA voters, 44.4 per cent mentioned ‘sure’ to the identical query and 26.6 per cent responded within the unfavorable.
Additional, a mixed 49.1 per cent of respondents mentioned Rahul ought to pit himself towards sitting MP and Union Minister Smriti Irani once more from Amethi whereas 53.7 per cent mentioned Priyanka ought to enter the Lok Sabha fray from the seat her mom vacated.
[Disclaimer: Current survey findings and projections are based on CVoter Opinion Poll Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) conducted among 41,762 adults, all confirmed voters. The surveys were conducted from February 1 to March 10, 2024. The data is weighted to the known demographic profile of the States. Sometimes the table figures do not sum to 100 due to the effects of rounding. The final data has socio-economic profiles within +/- 1% of the demographic profile of the states. We believe this will give the closest possible trends. The sample spread is across all 543 electoral constituencies in the country. The margin of error is +/- 5% and the vote share projections have been done with 95% confidence interval.]