Flood-prone Tamkuhi Raj, right at the Uttar Pradesh-Bihar border, has been the stomping ground for Ajay Kumar Lallu who has won the seat for the Congress twice consecutively, prompting his appointment as UP unit chief by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
But the street fighter Lallu, who has been in and out of jail or the lockup for taking on the Yogi Adityanath government, is in for a fight of his life from the seat this time with the Bharatiya Janata Party determined to end its three-decade-long drought of a win here. In fact, many in the constituency say the main contest is between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party.
“This is my home, I work like home here, meet people and do direct dialogue with them,” Lallu told News18 at the Congress office in Tamkuhi Raj, after arriving there pillion-riding on a bike. This is how Lallu campaigns too, deep inside villages. “Jeevan hi sangharsh hai (Life is a constant struggle)— I am sure people will bless me again.”
In the past five years, Lallu has been arrested many times for protesting against the Yogi Adityanath government. “He is afraid of me. Khauf hai man meaning. Lallu na lathi se darta hai, na jail se darta hai (There is fear in his mind. I am neither scared of batons nor jail),” Lallu said. He also asserted that the Congress will form the government in UP this time.
The mood at the Congress office is subdued in contrast to the one at the BJP office where the party’s Deoria MP Ramapati Ram Tripathi told News18 that Lallu is losing and will be at the third spot as he has not done any work. “SP’s cycle has been punctured and the fingers of the Congress ‘hand’ have all broken,” he said.
The BJP has put up a Bhumihar leader, Dr Asim Kumar, to turn the tables on Lallu. In a big boost to the ruling party, its former top leader from the area Nand Kishore Mishra returned to the BJP fold a few days ago after being denied a ticket by the SP. The Bhumihar-Brahmin combination would be a winner, the BJP says.
“In 2017, Lallu won as the SP allied with the Congress. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP polled the highest 1.38 lakh votes among all parties in this assembly segment. So earlier permutations no longer exist for Lallu,” BJP’s district chief Prem Chandra Mishra told News18. The party, however, has not won this seat since 1993.
Lallu takes on Congress deserters
Lallu has been the state unit chief while senior Congress leaders from UP, like RPN Singh, Lalitesh Tripathi, Jitin Prasada and Imran Masood, have all quit the party. “A politician who cannot win an election cannot be a politician. A politician is born from the ground, not in palaces. This is a new Congress. What did the Congress not give them— to Jitin, RPN or Lalitesh? Naam diya, samman diya, pehchaan di, aur jab aaj sangharsh ki bela hai, jail jane aur lathi khane ka dar hai, toh bhag gaye (Congress gave them name, respect and identity but when it was time to fight, they fled in the fear of facing batons and jail),” Lallu told News18.
He also criticized the “polarising campaign” of the BJP. “It is unfortunate that elections have been diverted from the real issues. I want to tell people to remember the incidents of Hathras, Unnao and Lakhimpur and times of oxygen shortage and deaths,” he said.
Who developed Tamkuhi Raj?
Both the BJP and SP say Lallu has done no development in Tamkuhi Raj. “Lallu did not do any work here. It is our government that did work on preventive measures against floods and this time there were no floods in the area. This was the belt where Lallu used to do drama on floods and win. That issue is over now,” BJP’s district chief Prem Chandra Mishra said.
Lallu, however, says he has raised the issues of farmers and of floods in the state assembly. “This area is surrounded by rivers and sugarcane and poverty. At least 10 big road expansions have been done in my tenure. People had to come by boats on rivers in many villages and I got bridges made,” he said.
The Congress also calls BJP candidate Asim Kumar an outsider. However, BJP’s Mishra says the candidate does not matter much in these polls. “People are voting for Modi and the lotus symbol and not so much for the candidate,” he asserted.
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