The Lok Sabha constituency of Lucknow is all set to see a three-way contest with the Congress announcing on Tuesday, 16 April, that it is fielding Acharya Pramod Krishnam from the Uttar Pradesh capital.
Earlier on Tuesday, Shatrughan Sinha’s wife Poonam Sinha joined the Samajwadi Party in the presence of Dimple Yadav, as the party confirmed that she would be the SP-BSP-RLD candidate from Lucknow, where Union Minister Rajnath Singh will be seeking his re-election.
“She will file the nomination on 18 April,” SP leder Ravidas Mehrotra had said, as he appealed to the Congress to not field their candidate from the seat “so that BJP can be defeated.”
Sources cited by IANS a few days earlier had even suggested that the Congress had decided not to field a candidate from Lucknow and support the candidature of Sinha from the UP capital.
Meanwhile, congratulating Poonam Sinha for joining the SP, party supremo Akhilesh Yadav had earlier said:
“It’s good that she joined in the presence of Dimple Yadav, who is also fighting the elections. We hope that she will take forward our party policies.”Akhilesh Yadav
On being asked about the dynamic of Shatrughan Sinha joining Congress, while his wife chose the SP, Yadav said, “This is how gathbandhans (alliances) are. This is the beauty of gathbandhans.”
Regarding the development, Lucknow’s BJP candidate Rajnath Singh told ANI:
“Yes, somebody must contest, that is the beauty of democracy. We will fight elections with full dignity. The culture which is a big part of Lucknow’s heritage, we’ll also maintain that.”Rajnath Singh
Notably, Rajnath Singh had won the Lucknow seat in 2014 garnering 55.7 percent of the total 10,06,483 votes polled. He had won in all the five Assembly segments of the constituency.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi, then a Congress MLA and former Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chairperson, had remained runner-up in these elections by securing 2,88,357 of the total votes.
(With inputs from ANI and IANS.)
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