Kerala BJP president K Surendran, who is contesting the Lok Sabha election against Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad, has claimed that the Congress leader will face the ‘same outcome’ as Amethi where he lost in 2019.

Wayanad is a constituency where there is a development crisis. Rahul Gandhi has done nothing for the constituency. He will meet the same fate in Wayanad as he encountered in Amethi last time,” PTI quoted Surendran as saying.

“The central leadership has entrusted me with a responsibility. They have asked to take up the fight in Wayanad constituency. The people of Wayanad will definitely ask why the senior leaders of INDIA alliance are contesting each other in the same constituency,” he added.

Surendran, who took over as the state BJP chief in 2020, had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Pathanamthitta and secured the third position. He was arrested and spent a month in jail in 2018 during the Sabarimala agitation.

This time, the Left has fielded CPI’s Annie Raja against both Gandhi and Surendran.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi had won from Wayanad by defeating Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate PP Suneer by a margin of over 4.31 lakh votes. An ally of the BJP, Bharath Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), had fielded its chief Thushar Vellappally, who could get only 78,816 votes from Wayanad.

While Gandhi had won from Wayanad, it lost to Union minister Smriti Zubin Irani by over 50,000 votes in Amethi. This constituency in Uttar Pradesh was a Congress bastion with the likes of Sanjay Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi having contested and won from here.

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Kerala, the state that sends 20 members to the Lok Sabha, will vote in the second phase on April 26. The counting of votes will take place on June 4.