It's Rahul vs Smriti Irani in Amethi again

Smriti Irani will once again come face-to-face with Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Uttar Pradesh's Amethi constituency for the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP announced as it released its first list of candidates.

This will be Irani's second attempt to wrest the seat from Congress. In 2014, she lost the seat by a margin of over one lakh votes to Rahul Gandhi.

However, the loss apparently had failed to dampen the spirit of the BJP leader who in the last four years has targeted the Congress president for his "failures" in Amethi on several occasions.

Earlier this month, Irani had accused the Congress president of not speaking up for the people of Amethi in Lok Sabha. "For the last five years, he has only uttered foul language against the Prime worker (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) of the country," Irani said in Amethi.

In 2009, Rahul had won the Amethi constituency by a margin of 3.70 lakh votes. In the next Lok Sabha polls, in 2014, the margin came down to 1.07 lakh votes.

Amethi is historically considered to be a Congress bastion. It remained the home turf of Rajiv Gandhi for four consecutive terms from 1981 to 1991. In 2004, Rahul Gandhi made his political debut from the seat. Prior to that, the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi had contested from the seat.

In its history, the constituency has seen a non-Congress MP on only two occasions — BJP's Sanjay Singh (1998-99) and Ravindra Pratap Singh (1977-1980).