Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said that the party had decided long ago that his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will not contest from Varanasi against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After months of build-up, the Congress announced last week that not Priyanka Gandhi but Ajay Rai, a local Congress leader who had finished third in the 2014 polls, would be the party's candidate again in the temple town in Uttar Pradesh. "It was a decision made long ago that Priyanka was not going to contest from Varanasi. I said that I would keep you in suspense and I did," Mr Gandhi told NDTV in his first interview this election season.
