Wayanad Bypoll: Actress Khushbu Sundar To Be BJP Candidate, Taking On Priyanka Gandhi?

Actress-turned-politician Khushbu Sundar is likely to be fielded as the BJP candidate against senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi in the upcoming Wayanad Lok Sabha by-election which will be held on November 13.

According to Malayalam media reports, Khushbu's name has been included in the final list of candidates, and the BJP central leadership is seeking the opinion from its grassroot workers from the Kerala unit on her candidature in Wayanad which comprises Mananthavady, Sulthan Bathery, and Kalpetta in Wayanad district, Eranad, Nilambur, and Vandoor in Malappuram district, and Thiruvambady in Kozhikode district.

Priyanka Gandhi will contest from Wayanad, replacing her brother Rahul Gandhi, who resigned from the seat and retained the Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh.

Khushbu has an interesting political journey. After hogging national limelight with her comments on pre-marital sex, she joined the DMK in 2010 before leaving the party to join its ally Congress in 2014. Four years later, she joined the BJP.

She had also served as a key member of the National Commission, last year.

Coming to the Wayanad constituency, BJP's Kerala state president K Surendran took on Rahul Gandhi who won the seats by garnering 647,445 votes. CPI's Annie Raja came distant second with 283,023 votes while K Surendran secured 141,045 votes.

Khushbu made her electoral debut in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections but lost to DMK's Ezhilan Naganathan by a margin of 32,200 votes in the Thousand Lights constituency.