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Rajnath to continue defending Atal’s turf
With the announcement of Rajnath Singh’s candidature for the Lucknow seat, the ball has been set rolling for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state capital. For the past several elections, contest in the state capital has been confined between the BJP and others, who contested for the second place. Other candidates were in fray here just to fulfill formalities of electoral politics and ensure representation of their parties.
Lucknow: Union defence minister Rajnath Singh will take on Samajwadi Party veteran Ravidas Mehrotra in Lucknow, a BJP bastion since 1991.
With the announcement of Rajnath Singh’s candidature, the ball has been set rolling for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state capital.
For the past several elections, contest in the state capital has been confined between the BJP and others, who contested for the second place. Other candidates were in fray here just to fulfill formalities of electoral politics and ensure representation of their parties.
However, there will be no Congress candidate this year from Lucknow as the seat has gone to the Samajwadi Party which is part of the INDIA alliance.
This will be the third consecutive time when Rajnath Singh will be contesting for the lower house of the Parliament from Lucknow.
Earlier, in 2014 lok sabha Rajnath Singh had defeated Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who was Congress candidate at the time.
In the 2019 general elections, Singh had defeated Samajwadi Party candidate Poonam Sinha, wife of Bollywood actor Shatrughan Sinha. In this election, Singh’s vote percentage had jumped by around 2.43 per cent.
BJP’s dominance on the Lucknow Lok Sabha seat may be guaged by the fact that late PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had represented Lucknow in the Lok Sabha for five times in a row from 1991 to 2004.
It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who bagged the seat for the BJP in 1991 probably for the first time by defeating Congress candidate Ranjeet Singh. Mandhata Singh, the sitting MP of the Janata Dal, was relegated to the third position. Thereafter, the BJP, represented by Atal Bihari in Lucknow, never looked back.
In 2009, the seat was won by late Lal Ji Tandon, who was Atal Bihari’s representative in Lucknow.
Even today, it is not uncommon to bump into people who swear by “Atalji”, as the stalwart is referred to, years after his death.
Many Lucknow landmarks bear his imprint or name. They include the Lok Bhavan office where his life-size statue has been installed, unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019. Then, there is the Scientific Convention Centre at the old city, his last gift to Lucknow.The BJP has reposed faith in another union minister Kaushal Kishore, who is union minister of state for housing and urban affairs, from Lucknow’s adjoining seat, Mohanlalganj which is a reserved constituency.
It was Kaushal Kishore who had breached this Samajwadi Party bastion in 2014 by defeating SP candidate Sushila Saroj.Kaushal Kishore not only retained the seat in 2019 but also considerably increased his vote share.
Assembly seats in Lucknow
BJP’s dominance in Lucknow is clear from the fact that the party won seven seats out of nine in the 2022 assembly polls.
Voters in Lucknow- 35,78,127
