Rae Bareli emerges from Sonia Gandhi’s charisma!

Rae Bareli, the constituency of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is witnessing crucial polling today in all the six assembly seats comprising the ‘VIP’ district, in the 4^th phase of Uttar Pradesh election.

Interestingly, this is the only time when Rae Bareli is voting without Sonia coming down for campaign even once.

Rae Bareli and Amethi are the traditional pocket borough of the Gandhi family and represented in the Lok Sabha by Sonia and her son Rahul Gandhi respectively.

To make amends, Sonia had instead issued a letter for Rae Bareli electorate lamenting her absence from electioneering this time due to unavoidable circumstance. Her letter had appealed people to vote the party candidates while reminding them of their long and mutual bond.

Meanwhile, the 4^th phase polling is underway across 53 assembly constituencies in 12 districts of the Bundelkhand and Eastern UP regions.

The poll bound districts are Allahabad, Kaushambi, Pratapgarh, Fatehpur and Rae Bareli, apart from 7 district consisting Bundelkhand viz. Lalitpur, Jhansi, Jaluan, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Banda and Chitrakoot. A total of 680 candidates are in fray in this phase.

Prominent contestants include UP ministers Raghuraj Pratap Singh, Manoj Pandey, Shivkant Ojha, Congress leader Pramod Tiwari’s daughter Aradhana Mishra, BSP turncoat and BJP leader Swami Prasad Maurya’s son Utkarsh Maurya, Anugrah Narain Singh, Ujjawal Raman Singh etc.

Congress, which has a pre-poll alliance with the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) in UP, is contesting 25 of the 53 seats in this phase. The party is contesting 9 seats of the total 19 assembly constituencies in Bundelkhand, which had voted 4 Congress leaders to UP Vidhan Sabha in 2012 poll.

Besides, Congress is engaged in ‘friendly fights’ with SP in many constituencies in Rae Bareli, Allahabad, Lalitpur and Fatehpur districts.

The assembly poll in UP are being held in seven phases on February 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, March 4 and 8. The state election had crossed halfway mark on February 19, when third phase had concluded, since elections to more than half of the total 403 state assembly constituencies had been completed.

The counting of votes would be held on March 11 for all five poll bound states of UP, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.

UP poll scene is still fluid and there are no clear indications as to the winning formation. However, the poll has now shaped up as ‘Modi versus others’ with the principal opposition parties mounting scathing attacks on BJP mascot and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in public meetings.