Lok Sabha elections 2024: Will it be smooth sailing for Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad again?

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is all set to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Kerala’s Wayanad, the constituency he won for the first time in 2019. He filed his nomination papers on Wednesday (3 April) after holding a mega roadshow in the district, along with his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Addressing the crowd, the former Congress president reportedly tried to strike a personal chord with the residents of Wayanad. “When I came to Wayanad five years ago, I was new here, but you elected me as your MP and soon you made me a member of your family. I have received love and affection. I have learnt so much from my brothers and sisters. It has been an honour for me to be the MP of Wayanad. I don’t treat you or think about you as an electorate, but I think about you the same way I think about my (little) sister Priyanka,” he said.

While Gandhi won the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat by a tremendous margin in the 2019 general elections, we will take a look here if history will repeat itself or if he is set for an uphill battle this time.

Wayanad: Lok Sabha seat and beyond

The hill district of Wayanad boasts lush green foliage and diverse wildlife. It reportedly has a forest cover of 36.48 per cent in Kerala.

Wayanad has a varied terrain, ranging from 354 feet to a maximum of 7,350 feet above sea level, noted Moneycontrol.

The district’s forests are part of a greater forested area including Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, Bandipur National Park, and BR Tiger Reserve in Karnataka, and Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and Sathyamangalam Forest in Tamil Nadu.

As per The News Minute (TNM), the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency was carved out in 2008 after a delimitation exercise. It consists of seven Assembly segments: three in the Wayanad district, three in the Malappuram district, and one in the Kozhikode district.

The Wayanad district has 6.24 lakh voters, while segments in the other two districts have a total of 8.05 lakh voters, reported The Week.

According to The Quint’s article in 2019, the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat has 44.85 per cent Muslims, 41.31 per cent Hindus and nearly 13 per cent Christians.

2019 Wayanad LS results

Congress has been triumphant in the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat since 2009.

MI Shanavas won the seat for the Grand Old Party in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. He retained the constituency in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, securing it by just a margin of 20,870 votes against the Communist Party of India’s (CPI) Satyan Mokeri.

The Wayanad seat fell vacant after Shanavas’ death in 2018. During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi chose to contest from Wayanad besides Congress’ traditional bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.

However, his decision was criticised by the Left in Kerala, including chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The Gandhi scion lost Amethi to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Smriti Irani. In Wayanad, he won by a record difference of 4,31,770 votes, the highest margin by which any candidate had won an election in Kerala.

Gandhi bagged over seven lakh votes with a 64.7 per cent vote share against CPI’s PP Suneer, who got 274,597 ballots with a 25.1 per cent vote share.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) registered a sweeping victory, winning 19 out of 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala.

Will Wayanad remain Congress’ ‘safe seat’?

Rahul Gandhi is facing CPI candidate Annie Raja from Wayanad this time. She also held a roadshow in the district before filing her nomination on Wednesday.

The CPI is a partner of the ruling CPI (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala. While the CPI and Congress are part of the Opposition INDIA bloc, the two parties are bitter rivals in Kerala.

As per The Week, the CPI had urged the Gandhi scion not to fight from Wayanad last September. The party fielding a leader like Raja was also viewed as a way to deter him from entering the fray from the district. However, the Congress again gave a ticket to Gandhi from Wayanad.

According to India Today sources, it was Rahul Gandhi’s choice to compete from Wayanad again instead of another seat in the South. He allegedly did not want to give the impression that he was “abandoning the voters who stood by him in a battle for political survival,” the TV channel reported.

Wayanad is my home, and the people of Wayanad are my family. From them, I have learned a great deal over the last five years and received an abundance of love and affection. It is with great pride and humility that I file my nomination for Lok Sabha 2024 once again from this… pic.twitter.com/rjgz0cYTyB

Earlier this week, Kerala CM Vijayan hit out at Gandhi for contesting against CPI’s national leader Raja. He said the Gandhi scion was challenging the LDF by fighting from Kerala, and asked why he was not fighting against the BJP “directly at the Centre”.

Besides Raja, Gandhi will face the BJP’s Kerala unit chief K Surendran from Wayanad. Both Raja and Surendran have targeted the Congress leader over his absence from the constituency in the last five years.

“Wild elephants have visited Wayanad more than Rahul Gandhi,” the Kerala BJP president had said after his candidature was announced.

The human-animal conflict in the district has become a prominent issue in the last few months, with a surge in the number of wild elephant attacks.

CPI national executive member Raja, who is way ahead of Gandhi in election campaigning in the district, has also repeatedly raked up the incumbent’s absence. Speaking to The Week, she said the Wayanad electors were asking the same question.

“They ask, ‘Will you be here after the election? Will you come and see us?’ I ask why they were asking this question and they reply, ‘Elephants have visited Wayanad many times; our MP, not even half as often’.”

Surendran, who has claimed he will put up a tough fight against his rivals, has called both Gandhi and Raja “tourists to Wayanad”, The Week reported.

The Congress leader had visited Wayanad in February following the deaths of two men in separate elephant attacks. He had visited the families of the victims, promising them his “full support”.

Rahul Gandhi met the family of a forest watchman killed in an elephant attack in Wayanad, on 18 February 2024. PTI File Photo

While national issues will dominate the polls, the rising man-animal conflict in Wayanad could be a hot-button topic.

Speaking to The Week, award-winning documentary filmmaker and political observer OK Johnny, said candidates cannot ignore issues like animal attacks that impact the “right to life” of a large number of the electorate.

A lack of medical infrastructure is another key issue in the hill district where patients have to be often taken to the adjacent Kozhikode district. According to Deccan Herald (DH), the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) could also play a role in Muslim-dominated segments of the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat.

As per Moneycontrol, Gandhi , whose vision for Wayanad includes various developmental plans, is cut off from the district’s more pressing issues related to livelihood and basic infrastructure in the region.

Some locals in Wayanad have expressed dismay at Gandhi’s absence in the last five years. While they put hopes on Raja’s candidature, they do not believe BJP’s Surendran, who will file his nomination on Thursday, would make much difference, DH reported.

So, will it not be smooth sailing for him this time?

Experts say while Gandhi is likely to win from Wayanad again, his margin could go down. “Last time, a significant portion of the left-leaning and liberal population voted for Rahul Gandhi, seeing him as a national leader and the face of the national front against the BJP,” Johnny told The Week.

“But now, with the entry of Annie Raja, Rahul Gandhi’s support from these sectors could diminish. She is poised to garner more votes than any previous left candidate because of her stature and her ability to connect with people. In fact, if it was not Rahul Gandhi contesting, she could have made the race in Wayanad even tighter,” he added.

As per India Today, Gandhi faces “no threat” in Wayanad numerically, however, he may “win with a smaller margin.”