Lucknow: Even as a rebel Congress MLA Aditi Singh After joining the BJP, political headlines increasingly focused on Congress stronghold Rae Bareli, which has been under siege by the saffron outfit in the UP elections due in the next few months.
The development has, in fact, positioned the BJP to tighten its hold on five of the six assembly seats in Rae Bareli, the parliamentary constituency of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
Unchahar is the only seat represented by Samajwadi Party’s Manoj Pandey, who defeated BJP’s Utkarsh Maurya, son of UP Labor Minister Swami Prasad Maurya, by a modest margin of nearly 2,000 votes in the 2017 elections.
In 2017, the Congress won two of the six assembly seats in the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency and the BJP three. Now both are in the saffron camp.
Before Aditi, who represents Rae Bareli Sadar, Congress MLA from Harchandpur seat in the district Rakesh Singh has been openly supporting the BJP since 2018, when her elder brother Dinesh Pratap Singh entered the ruling party. Dinesh also contested against Sonia in the 2019 Lok Sabha election but lost by a margin of over 1.67 lakh votes.
BJP’s Rae Bareli president Ram Dev Pal told TOI that the party has already started its election machinery of around 10,000 workers in the district. This includes 2385 booth level presidents.
“The district unit has been functioning for the last five years. We will leave no stone unturned,” he said while talking to TOI on Thursday.
A local strongman and daughter of former Congress MLA, the late Akhilesh Singh, Aditi had won the Rae Bareli seat, which accounted for nearly 63% of the total votes polled in her constituency in the 2017 assembly elections.
His victory was largely attributed to the influence of Akhilesh Singh, who died two years later in August 2019 following a prolonged illness. Experts said that Aditi will now face the challenge of maintaining the legacy of her father who has been winning the seat since 1993.
The three seats BJP won in 2017 included the reserved seat of Bachhrawan, where BJP’s Ram Naresh Rawat defeated Congress’s Saheb Sharan by a margin of nearly 22,000 votes. Similarly, the reserved seat of Salon was won by Dal Bahadur Kori of BJP who defeated Suresh Choudhary of Congress by 16,000 votes. Corey died in May this year after being infected with Corona.
Saloon, crucially, comes under the Amethi parliamentary seat, which BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani defeated former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi by a margin of 55,000 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This recently paved the way for Irani to be nominated as the chairman of the District Development Coordination and Monitoring Committee (DISHA) of Rae Bareli.
As per norms, the MP from the Parliamentary seat is the chairman of the committee, which was conceptualized by the Union Ministry of Rural Development in 2016 to oversee the implementation of various central schemes through inter-departmental coordination. Irani is also the chairperson of the Disha committee in Amethi. She was nominated as the chairperson of Rae Bareli Disha Committee, the seat was vacant since 2019.
Similarly, Sareni seat of Rae Bareli was won by BJP’s Dhirendra Bahadur Singh, who defeated Thakur Prasad Yadav of BSP by a margin of around 13,000 votes in 2017.
The development has, in fact, positioned the BJP to tighten its hold on five of the six assembly seats in Rae Bareli, the parliamentary constituency of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
Unchahar is the only seat represented by Samajwadi Party’s Manoj Pandey, who defeated BJP’s Utkarsh Maurya, son of UP Labor Minister Swami Prasad Maurya, by a modest margin of nearly 2,000 votes in the 2017 elections.
In 2017, the Congress won two of the six assembly seats in the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency and the BJP three. Now both are in the saffron camp.
Before Aditi, who represents Rae Bareli Sadar, Congress MLA from Harchandpur seat in the district Rakesh Singh has been openly supporting the BJP since 2018, when her elder brother Dinesh Pratap Singh entered the ruling party. Dinesh also contested against Sonia in the 2019 Lok Sabha election but lost by a margin of over 1.67 lakh votes.
BJP’s Rae Bareli president Ram Dev Pal told TOI that the party has already started its election machinery of around 10,000 workers in the district. This includes 2385 booth level presidents.
“The district unit has been functioning for the last five years. We will leave no stone unturned,” he said while talking to TOI on Thursday.
A local strongman and daughter of former Congress MLA, the late Akhilesh Singh, Aditi had won the Rae Bareli seat, which accounted for nearly 63% of the total votes polled in her constituency in the 2017 assembly elections.
His victory was largely attributed to the influence of Akhilesh Singh, who died two years later in August 2019 following a prolonged illness. Experts said that Aditi will now face the challenge of maintaining the legacy of her father who has been winning the seat since 1993.
The three seats BJP won in 2017 included the reserved seat of Bachhrawan, where BJP’s Ram Naresh Rawat defeated Congress’s Saheb Sharan by a margin of nearly 22,000 votes. Similarly, the reserved seat of Salon was won by Dal Bahadur Kori of BJP who defeated Suresh Choudhary of Congress by 16,000 votes. Corey died in May this year after being infected with Corona.
Saloon, crucially, comes under the Amethi parliamentary seat, which BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani defeated former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi by a margin of 55,000 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This recently paved the way for Irani to be nominated as the chairman of the District Development Coordination and Monitoring Committee (DISHA) of Rae Bareli.
As per norms, the MP from the Parliamentary seat is the chairman of the committee, which was conceptualized by the Union Ministry of Rural Development in 2016 to oversee the implementation of various central schemes through inter-departmental coordination. Irani is also the chairperson of the Disha committee in Amethi. She was nominated as the chairperson of Rae Bareli Disha Committee, the seat was vacant since 2019.
Similarly, Sareni seat of Rae Bareli was won by BJP’s Dhirendra Bahadur Singh, who defeated Thakur Prasad Yadav of BSP by a margin of around 13,000 votes in 2017.
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