The Lok Sabha election campaign for the Lucknow constituency in Uttar Pradesh ended on Saturday evening with most people confused over whether the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress were together in it, or fighting each other, or fighting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is the ruling party both at the centre and in the state.
On April 16, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had filed his nomination as the BJP candidate from this Lok Sabha seat which bears the name of the state capital.
On the same day, Poonam Sinha - wife of yesteryear actor and Congress candidate for Patna Sahib (Bihar) Shatrughan Sinha - flew from Mumbai to Lucknow, joined the SP and was named the SP-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) alliance candidate for Lucknow.
Later the same night, the Congress announced that Acharya Pramod Krishnam will be the party candidate from Lucknow. Rajnath Singh, on the other hand, is the sitting MP from Lucknow and his name as the candidate from the same seat had been announced by the BJP in its first list several weeks ago.
Sinha visited Lucknow on the occasion of his wife's nomination, during which he shared an election meeting stage with Dimple Yadav, wife of SP president Akhilesh Yadav, but failed to either meet the Congress candidate Acharya Pramod or participate in the latter’s election campaign.
He again visited Lucknow to participate in a campaign meeting of his wife but skipped the Congress campaign again, despite being the Congress candidate - and a high-profile one - from Patna Sahib in the neighbouring state.
This has caused resentment among Congress supporters and workers who feel that Sinha, taking advantage of being a high-profile defector from the BJP, is deliberately ignoring Congress interests for the interest of his wife, who is contesting on an SP ticket.
Besides, the presence of a Congress candidate on a stage full of SP leaders including Akhilesh has led many to believe that the SP and Congress are again fighting the election together - like what they did in the 2017 UP Assembly election.
All these have rattled the Congress candidate Acharya Pramod, who has repeatedly expressed his ire at Sinha.
In a tweet on the day Sinha was present during the filing of nomination papers by his wife Poonam in the presence of Akhilesh, Acharya Pramod said, “From the behaviour of Shatrughan Sinha, it appears that although he has joined the Congress, he has not yet resigned from the RSS.”
Sinha was also present throughout the roadshow by Poonam in which several state SP functionaries were present.
To the queries about his presence at a rival party’s show, Sinha had said: “I am here not as a Congress leader but as a husband and surely I have the right to be by my wife’s side at this time.”
Sinha said he would campaign for his wife but not for any other non-Congress candidate.
Last week, on another visit to Lucknow, Sinha also heaped praise on Akhilesh, saying the latter had excellent leadership qualities.
He dubbed the former chief minister Akhilesh as a “youth icon” and a “face of future.” He also termed Akhilesh as his “family member” and said that while “many people in the country are patting their own backs over development projects, they should see what our brother Akhilesh has achieved at such a young age.”
On Friday May 3, Sinha and Poonam’s actress daughter Sonakshi Sinha was in Lucknow and participated in a roadshow through the main streets of Lucknow.
People turned up in big numbers to catch a glimpse of the actress who waved and smiled at the people but did not say much in terms of an election speech.
Sinha did not join the roadshow. Also present on the lead vehicle was the SP leader Dimple Yadav.
The SP and the Congress had entered into an election alliance weeks before the UP Assembly election in 2017, and the alliance had been publicised widely as the coming together of two “youth leaders” Akhilesh and Rahul Gandhi, with the catchphrase “UP likes this combination” (UP ko ye saath pasand hai).
However, the election results saw the BJP get a huge majority to form the government after replacing the incumbent government led by Akhilesh.
Both Rahul and Akhilesh continued to assert for some time that their alliance was for keeps and would continue in future, but the SP later decided to forget its intense political rivalry with the BSP and formed a three-party alliance, including the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in it.
Even after this, Rahul continued to say that despite his party having been kept out of the alliance, the common objective of the Congress and the SP-BSP-RLD alliance was to defeat the BJP.
It has only been in recent weeks that the Congress president has started attacking the SP and BSP too in his election speeches, after Mayawati’s repeated attacks on his party.
From that perspective, it is unclear how Rahul would be reacting to his party’s newfound star Shatrughan Sinha repeatedly sharing election campaign space with the SP leaders, and also praising its leader Akhilesh.
On his part, however, Shinha says whatever he is doing is with the prior knowledge of both leaders. The dilemma is greater for the Congress candidate Acharya Pramod, who got neither the advantage of a star campaigner like Sinha on his side, nor any support from the Congress by means of another star campaigner.
He has been relying on the support of religious leaders, community groups and other social organisations.
The intriguing part is how Lucknow’s voters are supposed to react when they go out to vote on Monday, May 6.
