This Week Uttar Pradesh: Basking in F1 glory

Basking in F1 glory

Greater Noidas success in holding a Formula One event has allowed Chief Minister Mayawati not only to pat herself on the back but also to take a dig at states ruled by rival leaders. At the awards ceremony, she said UP has displayed its organisational,administrative and management strengths and set an example for other states. She spoke of the lakh guests,Indian and foreign,and observed that a neighbouring state could not manage a crowd of 5,000 and organise the Metallica bands peformance. The reference was to Haryana and the target was the Congress leadership that constantly praises that state as a model of good governance. Not that Mayawati spared others. UPs performance is a fitting reply to all those who have a negative mindset about the state, she said.

Why Rahul chose Phulpur

Phulpur,Rahul Gandhis choice to launch a mass contact programme on November 14,has a history that the Congress will seek to highlight to back up its election argument that UP has suffered since its exit from power in 1989. Phulpur was the Lok Sabha constituency of Rahuls great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru and the latters sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. It was from here in 1971 that V P Singh,then with the Congress,entered the Lok Sabha for the first time. The seats last Congress MP was Ram Pujan Patel,who won in 1984. In contrast,its most recent MPs have been the Samajwadi Partys Atiq Ahmad,often described as the product of a criminal-politician nexus,and the BSPs Kapil Muni Karvaria,who cannot compare with his illustrious predecessors.

Giants crowd BJP campaign

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The BJP has deployed several ambitious leaders on its UP poll campaign,an uneasy arrangement that can lead to clashes of egos. It is for that reason that the party has decided not to name a chief ministerial candidate yet,while the RSS has pulled Sanjay Joshi out of the deep freeze and sent him to UP to ensure all stays in order. The BJP had to go into damage control after a report in the local press that the party had finally made up its mind that Kalraj Mishra would be its chief minister candidate. Party chief Nitin Gadkari called a press conference in Lucknow and clarified,without referring to the report,that the chief minister would be selected by the MLAs after the elections,and that the BJP would be contesting under the joint leadership of Rajnath Singh,Mishra,Uma Bharti and state unit chief Surya Pratap Shahi.

Old leader,new headache

The Samajwadi Party has brought Azam Khan back to win over Muslims who,like Khan himself,had deserted it after Mulayam Singh Yadavs handshake with former BJP chief minister Kalyan Singh. But Khan himself is in trouble in his constituency,Rampur. Delimitation has incorporated a number of new villages whose support Khan apparently cannot take for granted because of complex caste and community equations that matter so much in any election in UPs rural areas. As a result,Khan will need to spend a lot of time in his constituency to reach out to the new voters. Besides,Digvijaya Singh,AICC general secretary in charge of UP,is constantly travelling across UP,meeting Muslims,visiting shrines.

Ajit upsets morcha partners

Efforts by the Rashtriya Lok Dal and the Congress to forge an electoral alliance have upset the smaller parties that have teamed up with the RLD to form a Lok Kranti Morcha. The morcha,headed by the RLDs Ajit Singh,was formed in February with the Peace Party of India,the Bharatiya Samaj Party,the Indian Justice Party,the Bharatiya Pichchara Varg Mahasnagh,the Ittehad-i-Millat Council,the Janwadi Party and the Bharatiya Lokhit Party. Ajit Singh had even allowed the LKM to run its affairs from his partys Lucknow headquarters. PPI president Ayub,authorised to speak on behalf of the LKM,has now moved out of the RLD office after the latter started negotiating with the Congress.