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Shahira Naim
Tribune News Service
Lucknow, February 22
The Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance will face a tough fight in the Nehru-Gandhi bastion Rae Bareli which goes to the polls in the fourth phase on Thursday.
Both alliance partners have fielded candidates here in two of the six seats (Sareni and Unchahar) adding to the confusion.
Moreover, this time Congress president Sonia Gandhi has not campaigned in her parliamentary constituency for the first time since 1998.
Even Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who had extensively campaigned for the Congress in 2012, made just a brief appearance at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s election rally at Rae Bareli on February 17.
Around 1.84 crore voters, including 84.50 lakh women, would exercise their franchise to elect 53 candidates from among 680 in the fray spread over a dozen districts tomorrow.
Besides Rae Bareli, Allahabad, Kaushambi, Fatehpur and Pratapgarh, the remaining districts are of the relatively backward region of Bundelkhand, including the districts of Banda, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur and Mahoba.
Once again, the ruling SP has much at stake as in 2012 polls it had won 24 of the 53 seats, BSP had won 15, Congress came third with six seats and BJP had been reduced to the fourth position with five seats, while Peace Party had managed three.
While the issues of demonetisation and farmers’ distress remain critical in this phase, the BJP has in recent days attempted to blunt the attack of the Opposition by giving the campaign a communal and casteist twist by raising the ‘kabristan-shamshaan’ issue.
It is a litmus test for CM Akhilesh Yadav in Bundelkhand region as he had given a generous relief package to the area earlier this year. He was so confident of the gesture going down well that he had declared to contest elections from this region but then the family feud broke out. Bundelkhand region first faced severe damage to crops by untimely rains and hailstorm and then equally bad drought.
If hectic campaigning, whirlwind rallies and huge crowds are any indication then all major parties outdid each other.