With SP ex-MLA in its fold, Cong in reckoning from its old citadel

PRAYAGRAJ The Sangam city has probably never seen a ‘political sangam’ of this kind as has unfolded now during the ongoing campaign for the Lok Sabha polls. The rare bonhomie between allies SP and Congress on the Allahabad seat has made the contest interesting here.

SP’s popular young face and former UP legislator Ujjwal Raman Singh comes from a political family having a strong base in the region. His father, Rewati Raman Singh, is a socialist stalwart who also represented Allahabad twice in the Lok Sabha. The icing on the cake is that Ujjwal’s entry into the Congress fold has been facilitated with the consent of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. No doubt then, Ujjwal as a Congress candidate, will get all the required support from his parent party, the SP.

In wake of the ‘sangam’ of two opposition parties, the BJP is still on a lookout for its candidate on the seat.

Sources said the BJP is yet to make up its mind over repeating its sitting MP Rita Bahuguna Joshi from the seat. Amidst the possible new faces, two local names doing the rounds include the wife of a sitting MLA and a minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet. Another one is a lawyer, whose father had been a BJP stalwart in the state.

The BJP had claimed both the Allahabad and Phulpur parliamentary seats in 2019. The Allahabad seat, which was won by Ujjwal Raman Singh’s father and senior SP leader Rewati Raman Singh twice in 2004 and 2009, comprises of five assembly segments - Allahabad South, Karchhana, Meja, Bara and Koraon.

Barring Allahabad South, the remaining four segments are dominated by rural voters. The Allahabad Parliamentary constituency has OBC voters, including those from the Yadav community dominating with around 24.34% of the voter base, followed by Brahmins (around 19.36%) and Muslims (16.6%) besides around 8.30% of the voters hailing from the Bhumihar community.

With SP and Congress joining hands, and the latter fielding Ujjwal Raman Singh as its candidate, political analysts believe that the split in votes of dominant communities of the area could be avoided.

“This could end up benefiting Singh and proving to be a tougher fight for the BJP candidate, unlike in the 2019 polls when Rita Bahuguna Joshi won the seat easily, bagging 55.62% of the votes. SP’s Rajendra Singh Patel had polled second with 34.89% of the votes while Congress’s Yogesh Shukla had come a distant third with a mere 3.59% of the votes,” recalled senior poll analyst Prof MP Dube, a former head of the political science department at Allahabad University (AU) and a former vice-chancellor of UP Rajarshi Tandon Open University, Prayagraj.

Out of the five assembly segments that comprise the Allahabad Parliamentary seat, Karchhana has traditionally been an SP stronghold with its veteran leader Rewati Raman Singh winning multiple assembly elections from here.

Rewati Raman represented the constituency eight times between 1974 and 2004 and became minister five times. He vacated the seat for his son after he was elected as Member of Parliament in 2007.

However, Ujjwal lost the polls twice in 2007 and 2012 to BSP candidates. Despite losing the seat in 2012, Ujjwal was given transport ministry in the SP government. He, however, defeated BJP’s Piyush Ranjan by a margin of 15,024 votes in 2017 assembly polls despite a massive BJP wave.

In 2017, Ujjawal again won the seat, but his party remained out of power. But in 2022, Piyush avenged the defeat by bagging 89,337 votes while Ujjwal could secure 79,753 votes.

The Allahabad Parliamentary constituency has seen 16 general elections and three by-elections till 2019. From 1952 to 1971, the seat was under Congress control. In the first Lok Sabha elections in 1952, freedom fighter Shriprakash had contested on a Congress ticket and was elected as MP. Former PM Lal Bahadur Shastri entered the electoral fray from this seat in 1957 and won twice consecutively. Subsequently, Harikrishna Shastri in 1967 and Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna in 1971 were elected MPs.

Janeshwar Mishra halted the Congress victory run in 1973. He contested from the Bharatiya Kranti Dal and became an MP. Later in 1984, Amitabh Bachchan became an MP from here on a Congress ticket. In the 1988 by-election, VP Singh had won as an independent candidate.

The saffron party first won this seat in 1996. BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi won consecutively three times from 1996 to 1999. In 2004 and 2009, the Samajwadi Party’s Rewati Raman Singh won the seat. In 2014, the BJP was successful in winning this seat. Shyama Charan Gupta (BJP) defeated SP’s Rewati Raman Singh though Gupta later left the BJP and joined the SP.