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RPN’s palace in Kushinagar now symbolises his party shift
A host of BJP workers descended on the palace last Sunday to welcome Singh, who was returning home for the first time after joining the ruling party, in New Delhi on January 24
Saffron has replaced the tricolour on the outer boundary wall of the sprawling Jagdish Garh palace in the heart of Padrauna town in eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar district after former Union minister RPN Singh quit the Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last month.
A host of BJP workers descended on the palace last Sunday to welcome Singh, who was returning home for the first time after joining the ruling party, in New Delhi on January 24. Congress workers, too, arrived at the palace premises — which also housed the main election office of the party — to collect documents and campaign material.
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While BJP supporters shouted slogans in support of Singh, Congress workers moved from one room to another, collecting documents and party material, including registers of booth and party committees. Soon, the three-room office was cleared of everything related to the Congress, with BJP workers dumping the remnants in the store.
A third group of people, mostly local residents, too, gathered at the palace to witness the takeover of the “last citadel” of the Congress in the region by the BJP.
“Since independence, the palace had been the hub of Congress activities in eastern Uttar Pradesh. It was the last citadel of the party in the region after the rise of the SP (Samajwadi Party), BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) and the BJP. Even after the Congress lost its support base in Uttar Pradesh with the rise and spread of ‘mandal’ (caste) and ‘kamandal’ (communal) politics, Congress leaders and workers would find solace and the spirit to fight back from the palace. We never thought this Congress bastion will fall to the saffron charge,” said 80-year-old Umakant Singh, a retired schoolteacher.
Most of the senior Congress leaders from the district have also crossed over to the BJP since Singh’s exit from the party.
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Shivkant Vishwakarma, a local trader, said the politics of Congress in the region begin to revolve around the Jagdish Garh palace in the 1960s when CPN Singh, RPN’s father, threw his hat in the political arena. Singh senior was elected to the legislative assembly and the Lok Sabha multiple times from Padrauna and was even a minister in the former PM Indira Gandhi’s cabinet.
“Whenever Congress president Sonia Gandhi visited eastern UP, she would visit the palace to send a message about the strong bond between the Gandhis and the Singhs,” he added.
RPN Singh not only carried the legacy forward but also strengthened the Congress in the region, the trader said.
In the 1996 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, of the seven seats in Kushinagar district, the BJP had won two, the same as Independent candidates, the Samajwadi Party and the Janata Dal (dissolved in 1999) won one each while RPN Singh won the lone seat for the Congress from Padrauna constituency. In 2002, the BJP again won two seats while the SP won four. Once again, Singh was the lone victor for the Congress from the same constituency in the district. Five years later, the BJP and the SP won three seats a piece while it was déjà vu for the Congress.
After Singh won the 2009 Lok Sabha election on a Congress ticket from the then newly formed Kushinagar constituency (it was Padrauna until 2008), the Congress’s tally in the district increased to two in the 2012 assembly elections. The SP won three seats in that elections while the BSP and BJP bagged one a piece.
In 2017 assembly elections, the BJP and its ally Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) won six of the seven seats in the district, riding the overwhelming Modi wave. State Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu was the lone representative of the party in the assembly from Tamkuhiraj seat.
When RPN Singh arrived at Padrauna, several Congress leaders and workers switched over to the BJP in his presence. The BJP has named Singh’s close aide Manish Jaiswal as the party candidate from the Padrauna assembly seat in the ongoing assembly elections.
Elections to the 403-member Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly are being held in seven phases, with polling for the first phase taking place on Thursday. The votes will be counted on March 10. Padrauna assembly seat will go to polls in the sixth phase on March 3.
On February 7, Singh took the fight to the neighbouring Fazilnagar assembly seat, where former minister and sitting MLA from Padrauna, Swami Prasad Maurya, filed his nomination as the SP candidate.
Surendra Kushwaha, the BJP candidate from Fazilnagar, filed his nomination in the presence of RPN Singh. Later, addressing party supporters at the Pawanagar Mahavir Inter College, Singh said the BJP governments in the state and at the Centre worked for “development and nationalism”. “People from all communities benefitted from the welfare schemes launched by the BJP government,” he said, adding, “To continue development efforts, people must support the formation of a BJP government in the assembly election.”
Singh had defeated Maurya, who was then a BSP candidate, in 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
A scion of Padrauna royal family, Singh belongs to the Other Backward Class (OBC) Sainthwar community, which has sizeable presence in Kushinagar, Gorakhpur, Deoria, and Maharajganj districts in eastern UP. Singh is also popular among the Dalits, upper caste and Muslim voters in the region. The BJP plans to counter Maurya, who recently quit the party to join the Akhilesh Yadav-led party, as the OBC face through RPN Singh. The SP chief has projected Maurya as a prominent OBC face of the party in the ongoing elections.
Maurya,who was formerly with the BSP, had defeated Congress’s Mohini Devi, RPN Singh’s mother, in bypoll to the Padrauna assembly seat in 2009. A year later, Maurya was made the president of the state unit of BSP. He was also a cabinet minister in the Mayawati government (2007-12). Though BSP lost power in the 2012 assembly election, Maurya secured victory from Padrauna seat.
On August 8, 2016, Maurya joined the BJP along with his supporters. After the formation of the BJP government in March 2017, Maurya was made given the charge of labour and employment departments in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet. Maurya’s daughter, Sanghmitra, was elected to the Lok Sabha on BJP ticket from Baduan in the 2019 general election. While Maurya has joined the SP, his daughter continues to be in the ruling party.
