India’s Congress party leader and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi will file her nomination for the Rae Bareli seat of Uttar Pradesh state on Thursday (11).
Sonia Gandhi, who has been representing the seat since 2004, will contest against Dinesh Pratap Singh, who had recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party after leaving the Congress.
The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have not fielded any candidate in the Congress bastion.
Rae Bareli goes to polls on May 6 in the fifth phase of the general election.
Sonia Gandhi had won the seat in 2004, 2006 (bypolls), 2009 and 2014.
In 2014, there were 15,94000 voters in the constituency and the poll percentage was 51.73 per cent, in which Sonia Gandhi had got 5,26,434 votes.
Since 1957, the Congress has won the seat 19 times, including three by-elections, and lost the seat only three times -- 1977, 1996 and 1998.
In 1977, after Emergency, Bharatiya Lok Dal's Raj Narain had defeated the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
In 1996 and 1998, BJP candidate Ashok Kumar Singh won the seat.
A 1996 photo of rapper Tupac Shakur (L) and Marion "Suge" Knight is shown on screens during closing arguments in the Duane Davis murder trial, related to the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, at Clark County District Court at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, on August 31, 2026. Getty Images
A rescuer assists a resident through heavy mud following flash floods on August 27, 2026 in Trishuli, Nepal. A sudden flood swept through the Bhote Koshi River basin in northern Rasuwa on August 26, damaging settlements, roads and energy infrastructure as rescue teams searched for residents and foreign travellers reported out of contact. Hundreds were reported missing, as the death toll started to climb.Getty Images
Rescue personnel provide medical treatment to a child at an army rescue camp in Trishuli Batar, Nepal, on August 27, 2026. A sudden flood swept through the Bhote Koshi River basin in northern Rasuwa on August 26, damaging settlements, roads and energy infrastructure, as rescue teams searched for residents and foreign travellers reported out of contact. Hundreds were reported missing as the death toll began to climb. Getty Ima
Family members of missing flood victims react at the emergency ward of the Maharajgunj Medical Campus, part of the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, on August 28, 2026 in Kathmandu, Nepal. Authorities said the flash floods were triggered after a mass of ice, mud and rock collapsed into a Himalayan river near the Nepal-China border, leaving hundreds dead or missing and causing widespread damage in affected districts. Authorities continued the gruelling search for victims, many buried under metres of mud, as both China and Nepal issued fresh flooding alerts.Getty Images