Rahul Gandhi resists attack of the clones in Wayanad

• The Congress party President bagged the Wayanad seat even as he lost Amethi.
• There were at least four other candidate with nearly similar names in Wayanad.

Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi redeemed himself from Amethi loss by winning his Waynad seat, with a spectacular 4.3 lakh margin over Communist Party of India (CPI) CPI's P P Suneer.

Rahul Gandhi had a unique challenge while campaigning in Waynad, one of the areas where he contested for a Lok Sabha seat.

Polling issues aside, Gandhi battled ‘the attack of the clones’.

One is his rivals is Raghul Gandhi and another is Rahul Gandhi K E. While Rahul Gandhi KE is an independent candidate, Raghul is career politician from Agila India Makkan Kazagham who ran for assembly elections in 2016, along with a mayoral election in 2014.

The Election Commission has been dealing with this manner of namesake confusion for years now. And, they have a plan up their sleeve. When namesakes and similar sounding names contest, EC adds photographs of contestants to go with their name, to ease confusion.

Congress’ Rahul Gandhi had contested from this constituency as well as Amethi. Poll experts had said that this decision to contest from two places is influenced by the fact that he is facing tough competition in Amethi.

Gandhi had campaigned heavily in Waynad in spite of attending 150 rallies in all across the country, during the elections. Gandhi had faced controversies as well. BJP had alleged that Gandhi had canvassed for votes via Twitter as polling was underway, in his constituency.

It is no wonder that Gandhi has gone heavily because he isn’t fighting his namesakes but also a total of 20 contenders like P P Suneer from Communist Party of India (CPI); Thushar Vellapally from BHarata Dharma Jana Sena (BJDS), and P K Muhammed from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). In addition, there were 13 independent candidates in fray, as well.

Waynad is one of those rare Congress bastions in Kerala. For the last two elections, M Shanavas of Congress has been the sitting MP from the seat. He has now made way for Rahul this election, who had to battle with other Rahuls and Gandhis to keep within the Congress fold.