The viral press release of All India Congress Committee claiming that Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi will be contesting from Amethi and Raebareli is misleading.

2024 general elections had started from 19 April. So far two rounds of elections have been completed. The third phase of voting will be held in 12 states on May 7 in a total of 94 Lok Sabha seats. Meanwhile, political parties have announced their list of candidates for most of the seats. Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance is fighting in 80 seats of Uttar Pradesh. Out of these 80 seats, the Congress will contest for 17 seats and the Samajwadi Party will contest the remaining seats.

Against this background, a press release in the name of All India Congress Committee is going viral on social media which claims that Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been nominated for Raebareli and Amethi respectively.

However, Fact Crescendo found the claim to be misleading. AICC has not released this press release. The name of candidates for both Raebareli and Amethi has not been decided. 

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These two Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh are highly debated for political reasons. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi won from Amethi, later Sonia Gandhi also won and became a member of Lok Sabha. Rahul Gandhi lost to BJP leader Smriti Irani in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. On the other hand, Sonia Gandhi won from Raebareli seat with Indira Gandhi.

If Congress would have announced the name of its candidate in these popular seats, it would have made the headlines. But there is no media report about it.

We did not find any news about Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi contesting from Amethi and Raebareli on Congress’ social media account and on their website as well. 

The viral press release was posted on social media on 30 April. When we checked Congress’ website, we found that on 30 April the party released 3 press releases. Out of these 3, only one had the list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. These candidates are from 3 states (Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra) and 4 constituencies. This press release does not have name of any candidates for Uttar Pradesh’s constituencies. 

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Conclusion: 

Fact Crescendo found the claim to be misleading. Congress did not make any press release having names of candidates for Amethi and Raebareli. The viral press release is fake.