Lucknownama

Dire straits
Another Brahmin minister,however,is having anxious moments. Health Minister Anant Kumar Mishra was supposed to take care of the party campaign in Kanpur where Sukhda Mishra,a neo-covert from BJP,was fielded against Congress heavyweight Shriprakash Jaiswal. Sukhda Mishra fared badly,and even lost her deposit. Worse for Anant Mishra,party candidate Naresh Agarwal in Farrukhabad,who lost to Salman Khursheed of the Congress by 27,000 votes,has reportedly complained that the minister sabotaged his election. The BSP grapevine has it that Mayawati is angry with the Health Minister,but since he is a relative of party general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra,she has referred the matter to him. Behanji’s problem is there are too many ministers in whose areas the opposition has done surprisingly well. In Allahabad,Ashok Bajpai lost although the party has two ministers,Nand Gopal Nandi and Rakesh Dhar Tripathi,and two MLAs. The SP has no legislators from Allahabad,yet party candidate Reoti Raman Singh won.

In a quandary
Which seat will Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son Akhilesh Yadav — who has been elected from both Kannauj and Ferozabad — retain? Most likely it is going to be Ferozabad. The SP suspects that if Akhilesh vacates Ferozabad,it will only help the Congress. The infighting among the SP’s local satraps,who close ranks only at the name of Mulayam Singh or his son,will make things easy for the Congress which may field former SP rebel leader Raj Babbar,who had lost from nearby Fatehpur Sikiri by a narrow margin.
Two SP renegades — Beni Prasad Verma and Shafikur Rahman Burk — have been re-elected. The party wouldn’t like to do anything which helps a third. Besides,the SP is committed to sending Kalyan Singh’s son Rajvir Singh to the Lok Sabha. So why not vacate the safer Kannauj?

Reeled out
Movie magic was a big failure in the election arena. None of the actors — of Bhojpuri or Hindi movies — could impress the voters. Tripti Shakya of BJP proved a lost proposition against SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav in Mainpuri. Manoj Tiwari of SP was no match against BJP stalwart Yogi Aditya Nath in Gorakhpur. Nafisa Ali,who stepped into the shoes of Sanjay Dutt for SP from Lucknow,was nowhere in the reckoning and even lost the security deposit winning only 66,000 votes. The surprise loser was sitting MP Raj Babbar fighting on a Congress ticket from Fatehpur Sikri. He lost the battle by a thin margin to Seema Upadhyay,wife of a BSP minister of state. The voter was actually not biting the glamour bait. Even television actor Pawan Shanker’s ploy of bringing colleagues Aman Varma,Varun Badola and Shama Sikdar to campaign for his father Shyam Krishna Pandey,Congress candidate from Allahabad,fell flat.

Clearing the air
A recent advertisement by Akhilesh Das in some newspapers announced that the free ambulance service,which he had discontinued because of the model code of conduct,will be resumed soon. Sources close to Das said the advertisement had become necessary in view of some talk that Das had decided to stop all his philanthropic activity after his defeat in the election in Lucknow.