- Monday, April 29, 2024
The incident happened in the southern state of Tamil Nadu while Gandhi was on his way to the state of Kerala, which he represents in parliament, for campaigning.
By: Shubham Ghosh
OFFICIALS of India’s election commission on Monday (15) conducted a search in a helicopter that carried Rahul Gandhi, leader of the country’s main opposition Congress after it landed at the Nilgiri College of Arts and Science in Thaloor in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, reports said.
“The flying squad officials conducted the search after the helicopter landed here,” the local police, according to a report by the Press Trust of India.
Gandhi, 53, was going to his parliamentary constituency Wayanad located in the neighbouring state of Kerala where he was slated to hold roadshows and public meetings. He later held a roadshow in Wayanad where he won in the 2019 parliamentary election. He was disqualified for a few months as the MP of Wayanad last year following his conviction in a case related to his verbal attack against the Modi surname. He was reinstated as the parliamentarian after the Supreme Court stayed his conviction and sentencing by a court in Surat in the western state of Gujarat.
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#WATCH | The Helicopter through which Congress leader Rahul Gandhi arrived in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu was checked by the Election Commission's Flying Squad officials in Nilgiris.
(Video source: Election Commission Flying Squad) pic.twitter.com/aSOoNxyUJB
— ANI (@ANI) April 15, 2024
Prime minister Narendra Modi was also in Kerala on Monday for campaigning. He took part in an election rally in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, besides taking part in another in Thrissur constituency.
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Gandhi, who is seeking his second successive term from Wayanad, was scheduled to take part in a rally of the United Democratic Front led by his party in Kozhikode in northern Kerala on Monday afternoon. Gandhi, who lost his older constituency of Amethi in the 2019 election to India’s current women and child welfare minister Smriti Irani, won from Wayanad over his nearest rival by more than 431,000 votes.
On April 26, Wayanad will see a high-profile battle with Gandhi pitted against a senior Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Annie Raja and K Surendran, the chief of the Kerala chapter of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Interestingly, the Congress and CPI are members of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance which is eyeing to defeat the BJP in this election.
All 20 parliamentary states in Kerala, where the BJP is desperate to open its account in this election, will go to polling on April 26, the second of the seven phases of the national polls beginning April 19.
