Rahul Gandhi faces a dilemma after winning both seats. He now has to choose between Uttar Pradesh and Kerala.

But the Congress leader was not ready to commit it yet.

"I can't stay in two seats but I haven't decided which one I will give up," said Mr Gandhi, 53, with a copy of a Constitution placed before the mic.

In 2019, Mr Gandhi had lost to BJP's Smriti Irani in Amethi. The leader, who undertook Bharat Jodo yatras, returned to UP in 2024. He chose to fight from Raebareli, a seat represented by his mother, Sonia Gandhi, five times.

The BJP, which was aiming for 370 seats and set the NDA a target of 400-plus, has lost, let down by Uttar Pradesh.

At 6 pm, the NDA was ahead on 296 seats, the BJP on 241. The INDIA bloc was ahead on 229 seats, the Congress on 100.

"The way Akhilesh Yadav fought in UP, Mamata Didi in Bengal, Stalin sahab in Tamil Nadu, Sharad Pawar sahab and Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra, and the way Congress performed, led by Rahul Gandhi, Kharge Sahab and Priyanka ji, their number is touching 100. No one could have imagined after the exit polls that the opposition would perform so well," Mr Abdullah, a former minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

Rae Bareli went to the polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on May 20.

The BJP fielded Dinesh Pratap Singh against Rahul Gandhi while BSP fielded Thakur Prasad Yadav.

Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh was one of the hotly contested seats, as it has been the stronghold of the Gandhi family.

After representing Amethi from 2004 to 2019, Rahul Gandhi shifted to Rae Bareli this time. Raebareli is considered the Gandhi family bastion. Sonia Gandhi, the then Congress chief, won Raebareli last time in 2019.

Source : DNA India