Rajanath Singh eyes '5 lakh paar' victory margin in Lucknow as oppn toils to make a mark

The Bharatiya Janata Party has been maintaining an iron hold on Lucknow Lok Sabha constituency since 1991, when it was first won by party veteran and former prime minister late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who won five times on the trot and continued to hold the seat till 2009.
Vajpayee’s Man Friday Lalji Tandon won the seat in 2009 and passed on the baton to another senior leader Rajnath Singh who, carrying forward Vajpayee’s legacy, emerged victorious in 2014 and 2019, and is looking forward to a hat-trick from the City of Nawabs which goes to polls on May 20.
In 2014, Singh bagged 54.43% of the votes polled, which went up to 56.64% in 2019, when he won the seat by a margin of 3.5 lakh votes against SP candidate Poonam Sinha. Though SP had contested the 2019 election in alliance with BSP, Singh won more votes than both the SP-BSP combine and Con-gress, which totaled 4.62 lakh votes.
LUCKNOW MOVES BEYOND CASTE LINES
Before him, three non-Brahmin MPs elected from Lucknow include BK Dhaon and Lalji Tandon, both Khatris, and Mandhata Singh. When Singh con-tested his first election from Lucknow in 2014, he faced Brahmin candidates from SP, BSP and Congress. Interestingly, none of the major parties has fielded a Brahmin candidate. Three main candidates belong to Thakur, Khatri and Muslim communities which shows that Lucknow is no longer voting on caste lines. Lucknow Lok Sabha constituency has over four lakh Muslims and an equal number of Brahmins, besides over two lakh Kayasthas. SP’s Ravidas Mehrotra is a socialist who became a legislator fromthe city for the first time in 1989. He has been to jail over 250 times in his career, mostly for ‘breach of peace’.
BSP’s Sarwar Malik started his career with students politics in 2012 and contested the Lok Sabha election from Lucknow on TMC’s ticket in 2014. He joined BSP in 2015 and was fielded by the party from Lucknow North assembly seat in the 2022 state elections.
Even as both the opposition candidates are toiling hard to make their mark in the face of BJP’s poll blitz, Rajnath is depending on the develop- ment plank to set the victory margin target of ‘5 lakh paar’ (victory margin of over 5 lakh votes).
‘OPPOSITION FACE NOT VISIBLE’

RAJNATH’S POPULARITY
Had it not been for Singh, maybe I would not have voted for BJP,” he said.
Vishal Singh, an entrepreneur, says, “He is a very dignified politician.
I have never heard him speak ill about other politicians, a trait that is seldom seen. He gave Lucknow facilities like Shaheed Path and Outer Ring Road. He also ensured safety and security to residents in his last two terms.”
BJP continues to remain a popular choice for businessmen. Talking of the development brought in by BJP, they say that PM Narendra Modi remains the face of the party. “We don’t care whom the BJP fields as long as Modi is the PM. For me, Lord Ram and the nation are major election issues. Infrastructure development is taking place at a massive speed. The PM has a vision where he is not talking about 2029 but about 2047. People’s needs are being met, they are getting access to health and education,” said Sanchit Garg, an industrialist in the solar energy sector.
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