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Will it be SP candidate on Cong ticket in Allahabad?
Speculation along these lines gained currency amid developments that began on Friday with Congress Uttar Pradesh in-charge Avinash Pandey meeting veteran Samajwadi Party leader Rewati Raman Singh and his son Ujjwal.
Will former Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA Ujjwal Raman Singh be the Congress candidate on the prestigious Allahabad seat for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls?
Speculation along these lines gained currency amid developments that began on Friday with Congress Uttar Pradesh in-charge Avinash Pandey meeting veteran Samajwadi Party leader Rewati Raman Singh and his son Ujjwal. Later, Ujjawal met SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday
“No one should draw any conclusion from Avinash Pandeyji calling on us. He called on us on Friday to see my father in a Lucknow hospital where he was undergoing treatment. Nothing political was discussed,” Ujjwal Raman Singh said when asked about the meeting.
On Saturday, Rewati Raman Singh returned to Prayagraj after his discharge from hospital, but Ujjwal stayed back and met Akhilesh Yadav, an SP insider said.
When asked about the meeting with Akhilesh, Ujjwal said: “I indeed met him.”
The Congress has not been able to find any suitable candidate from within its ranks and is angling for the SP’s Ujjwal to contest the seat on the Congress ticket, people familiar with the development in the Congress and the SP said.
Ever since the SP gave the Allahabad seat to the Congress under its seat-sharing pact, Rewati Raman Singh is said to be upset. The Congress was strong on the seat once but has not won it since 1984 when its candidate, actor Amitabh Bachchan defeated political stalwart and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna. The Congress has not even been the first runner-up on the seat since 1989.
Rewati Raman Singh, the most recent non-BJP winner on the seat, emerged victorious as the SP candidate in 2004 and 2009.
The late Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna’s daughter Rita Bahuguna Joshi is the sitting BJP MP from Allahabad, a seat once held by political stalwarts Purshottam Das Tandon, late PM Lal Bahadur Shastri (twice), former UP CM Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, former PM Vishwanath Pratap Singh (twice), Samajwadi Party ideologue Janeshwar Mishra (twice) and BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi (thrice).
There is also speculation that the Congress may field a candidate from outside Uttar Pradesh for the seat.
On its part, the BJP has not declared its candidate for the seat and there is uncertainty if the party will renominate Rita Bahuguna Joshi or not.
There is also the buzz that the BJP is looking for Ujjwal to contest the polls, but a close aide of Rewati Raman Singh dismissed the speculation, saying that the family did not meet or talk to any BJP leader.
Rewati Raman Singh’s family is a Bhumihar upper-caste one and the Allahabad Lok Sabha constituency has always elected upper-caste candidates.
