Congress refused Supriya Shrinate a ticket from the Maharajganj constituency in Uttar Pradesh, where she was defeated in the 2019 general elections, amidst the controversy after her offensive and derogatory social media post against actress Kangana Ranaut.
On the night of 27th March, the grand old party unveiled its eighth list with the names of 14 contenders for the upcoming polls. Virendra Chaudhary replaced Supriya Shrinate in Maharajganj in the list. Incidentally, Maharajganj is close to Rae Bareilly, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s pocket burrow constituency which she would not run for this time.
Following the announcement of Kangana Ranaut’s candidacy for the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency in Himachal Pradesh, Congress leaders and party trolls attacked her on 25th March with sexist and derogatory remarks. Congress National Spokesperson Supriya Shrinate posted, “Kya bhav chal raha hai Mandi me koi batayega? (Will someone tell me what the rating system in Mandi is),” in an Instagram post alongside a photo of Kangana Ranaut.
The post was later deleted.
She later released a clarification to explain herself following intense criticism for the despicable comment from her verified social media accounts. She stated in her explanation video that it was made by “someone who had access to her account,” and promised to hold the individual responsible for the post accountable. Congressmen like Srinivas BV and Pawan Khera also spoke in support of her.
Notably, Supriya Shrinate is the daughter of former Maharajganj MP late Harsh Vardhan who was also a congress leader. The Congress chose her as its Lok Sabha candidate in 2019 from the area in place of Tanushree Tripathi who is the daughter of convicted politician Amarmani Tripathi. Interestingly, initially, both the Congress and the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s brother Shivpal Singh Yadav, had revealed Tanushree Tripathi’s name as its candidate.
Supriya Shrinate was a journalist earlier
Supriya Shrinate who served as an Executive Editor with ET resigned from her position to join active politics and became a member of the Indian National Congress in 2019 to contest the general election from Maharajganj. “I have stepped down as Executive Editor at ET Now to pursue the next challenging phase of my life outside media. I thank The Times group for the most exciting 10 years of my journalism. Wish the channel, mgmt all my colleagues the very best. I will be taking an active plunge in politics, am grateful to Indian National Congress, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Jyotiraditya Scindia for trusting me with Maharajganj,” she wrote on social media.
However, Supriya Shrinate suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of BJP candidate Pankaj Choudhary who managed to score around 60% of the vote share while she came in the third position after the Samajwadi Party candidate Akhilesh who received 31.45% of the votes. The Congress candidate only secured 5.91% of the votes.
Afterwards, she was appointed as the party’s spokesperson in 2022. Randeep Singh Surjewala had informed, “Sonia Gandhi has approved the appointment of Shrinate as spokesperson of the All India Congress Committee,” in an official statement. In the same year, she took over as the party’s chairperson of the social media and digital platforms in its new communications department replacing Rohan Gupta.