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After performing a 'havan', Congress President Sonia Gandhi today filed her nomination papers from the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat in yet another bid to reach Parliament from the family bastion in central Uttar Pradesh.
Accompanied by her son Rahul, Gandhi, 67, who had won the seat three times earlier, including in a by-election, presented three sets of nomination before district election officer Aditi Singh.
Old family loyalist Satish Sharma and her representative K L Sharma were with her when she filed the papers in which the proposers were Uma Shankar Mishra (district president of Congress), Ashok Kumar Singh (former MLA) and Rajaram Tyagi (former MLA).
Before she went into the district collectorate to file the nomination, a 'havan' was performed at the local Congress office in which Sonia and Rahul participated.
While SP has decided not to field anyone against her and Rahul, BJP has fielded Supreme Court lawyer Ajay Aggarwal. The AAP is yet to announce a candidate.
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"The people of Rae Bareli have adopted me with immense affection and I hope they will make me victorious again in the election," she told reporters in a brief interaction after filing her nomination.
After done with the formalities of getting into the election fray, Gandhi called on some Muslim clerics which she said had been a tradition from the days of Feroze Gandhi and Indira Gandhi.
"We are not in the game or business of polarisation," she told reporters who asked her about her meeting with Jama Masjid Imam Syed Ali Bukhari at her residence in Delhi yesterday during which she had said secular votes should not split in the coming election.
Gandhi, who arrived in the morning from Delhi, was given a rapturous welcome from the Fursatganj airport to the district collectorate office to which she was driven by Rahul in an SUV.
She was welcomed with showering of rose petals all along the route with women, youth and children shouting slogans in her support.
She got down at Ghosiyana Road and other places to meet her electorate which comprised of a large number of women.
The constituency has been a Nehru-Gandhi family bastion since the 1960s. Indira Gandhi won it for the first time in 1967, taking over after the death of her husband Feroz, who was also an MP from here.
Gandhi is a three time MP from Rae Bareli, including once elected in a by-election in 2006, after she resigned over office of profit issue. In 2004 elections she shifted to Rae Bareli from neighbouring Amethi, leaving it to her son Rahul Gandhi.
In 1999, she had won from Amethi and had also defeated BJP's Sushma Swaraj from the Bellary Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka.
