Lok Sabha election 2024: Congress’ Ajay Rai, who unsuccessfully fought 2 elections against Modi to challenge the PM again

Lok Sabha election 2024: In a direct fight for the third consecutive time, Congress’ Ajay Rai will contest against Prime Minister Narendra from the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.

Rai, who was earlier in the BJP and the Samajwadi Party, had fought the 2014 and the 2019 Parliamentary elections as a Congress candidate against Modi and lost on both the occasions.

The grand old party, however, has again decided to field him against the PM who is the prime ministerial candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and a two-time MP from prestigious Varanasi seat.

The Congress party released it’s fourth list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections 2024 and Rai’s name was announced from Varanasi against Modi.

The party, after a hectic round of deliberation, released names of 17 candidates out of which nine were from Uttar Pradesh. Congress is fighting in coalition with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh where there are 80 constituencies.

Rai, who has lost twice from the seat, is willing to defeat the BJP heavyweight and is banking on the anti-BJP votes. Modi, whose candidature was announced in the BJP’s first list, is seeking a mandate for the third time from the constituency.

Modi had defeated Rai and AAP National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal with a huge margin in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Kejriwal was defeated with a margin of nearly 3 lakh votes. Rai, however, had got nearly 75,000 votes. Modi had got nearly 56 percent of the votes.

In 2019, Modi contested against Rai and Samajwadi Party’s Shalini Yadav and had secured 63 percent votes. With 18 percent vote share, Shalini was in the second position. Rai , however, was in the third position with just 14 percent votes.

The Congress on Thursday released the third list of 57 candidates for Lok Sabha elections.”The third list of names of Congress candidates on 57 Lok Sabha seats for the Lok Sabha elections, 2024 was released in the meeting of the ‘Central Election Committee’ held under the chairmanship of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge,” the party said in a post on X.