Gujarat Congress leader Bharat Solanki not willing to contest LS polls

Even as Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party leader Rahul Gandhi are busy trying to convince senior colleagues to contest in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, Congress leader and former Union minister Bharat Solanki took to microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter) on March 12 to announce that he is not keen on fighting in this election.

According to party sources, Kharge and Rahul had personally urged Solanki to contest the poll from Gujarat's Anand seat and this was discussed during the election committee meeting yesterday as well.

In his post, Solanki said that his family and he have been given a lot by the Congress party over the decades. "Considering my current responsibility as AICC in-charge Jammu & Kashmir and to be able to effectively campaign for the party in Gujarat, I humbly convey to the high command of my wish not to contest this election. Nevertheless, being a lifelong soldier of @INCIndia, I will accept and obey whatever the decision is made by the Central leadership," he wrote.

Bharat Solanki is the son of Congress stalwart, the late Madhavsinh Solanki, former Chief Minister of Gujarat. A Rajpur leader, Bharat had won the Anand Lok Sabha seat in the 2004 and 2009 LS polls and was a minister of state in Dr Manmohan Singh's council of ministers during UPA-2.

Currently, the Congress in-charge for J&K, he has been previously the leader of Opposition in the Gujarat assembly and president of the Gujarat Congress.