After exit polls indicate a war wide open, the battle for Uttar Pradesh is being fought fiercely on the road—and in the skies. Political campaigners have been flying to remote corners of the state in chartered aircraft to spread their message. The Indian Express has accessed official records of all take-off and landings in Lucknow. Some plane factsTAXIING BEFORE TAKE-OFFBetween April 16 and 20, all politicians recorded 21 flight movements in chartered planes and choppers ferom Lucknow to other parts of UP.• Between April 21 and 25, this rose to 23.• Between April 26 and 30, it shot up to 31.THE HIGH-FLYERS SINCE APRIL 26• BJP accounts for 19 flights.• Samajawadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have taken five flights each.• Congress: Two, both on April 28.FREQUENT FLYERS• For BSP, only Mayawati uses an aircraft. She has made five sorties over the past five days. Had done only four between April 16-25.• For BJP, Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Kalraj Mishra account for 14 of the 19 sorties. Prime Minister Vajpayee has made three trips.• Both the Cong flights were for, you guessed right, Sonia Gandhi.BJP PILING ON THE MILES WHILE.• Call it confidence or whatever, Mulayam Singh Yadav has taken just one flight—to Allahabad—since April 26. In contrast, he had seven flights between April 16 and April 25.• His right-hand man Amar Singh went on five sorties between April 16 and 25 and has gone on two since then.• Sonia Gandhi flew from Lucknow to Agra on April 28.THE PASSENGERS• BJP: Kalyan Singh, Vinay Katiyar, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan, Kalraj Mishra, Om Prakash Singh, Smriti Irrani, Varun Gandhi, Arif Mohammed Khan.• SP: Mulayam Singh Yadav, Shiv Pal Singh Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav, Azam Khan, Jaya Prada• BSP: Mayawati along with her inseparable security men Padam Singh and Panna Lal.• Congress: Sonia Gandhi with her SPG teamDESTINATION BJP• BJP leaders have in the past five days travelled to places like Lakhimpur Kheri, Unnao, Ghatampur, Allahabad and Meerganj, covering more number of places by air than any other party.
