The Congress released its fourth list of 45 candidates on Saturday for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections fielding party’s Uttar Pradesh unit chief Ajay Rai from Varanasi to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rai has been renominated for the third time after unsuccessfully contesting against Modi from the same seat in 2014 and 2019.
The party announced candidates for 12 seats in Madhya Pradesh, nine in Uttar Pradesh, seven in Tamil Nadu, four in Maharashtra, and two each in Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Manipur, and Jammu and Kashmir. The party also announced one candidate each from West Bengal, Assam, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Mizoram, and Chhattisgarh.
Veteran leader Digvijay Singh who has been given a ticket from Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh and newly-induced Lal Singh who has been pitted against Union minister Jitendra Singh from Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur.
Who Is Ajay Rai
Notably, Rai began his political career as convenor of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Bharatiya Janta Party in 1991-92
As a BJP candidate, he won three times in a row from Kosala constituency during Uttar Pradesh assembly election between 1996 and 2007. In 2002, Rai got a ministerial berth in the Mayawati-led BSP-BJP alliance Uttar Pradesh government as a state minister for cooperatives.
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In 2007, Rai left the saffron camp after the party gave ticket to Murli Manohar Joshi to contest Lok Sabha elections from Varansi.
Rai then joined the Samajwadi Party but lost to Jodhi from the Varanasi seat.
In 2012, Rai joined Congress and won UP assembly elections from the Pindra constituency but lost the state polls in 2017.
He challenged PM Modi in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Varanasi but lost both times.
