Sanjay Sinh: 33 years after he lost poll battle, ‘Raja of Amethi’ enters ring again

After his 2019 Lok Sabha poll loss from Sultanpur (he lost to Maneka Gandhi), Sinh and Ameeta left the Congress to join the BJP. Now, with Sinh, Ameeta and Garima in the BJP, the party has decided to put him up instead of having to choose between one of the two wives.

Sinh, once considered close to Congress leader Sanjay Gandhi, has over the last three decades served as Union Minister and state minister in successive Congress-led governments. Besides representing the Congress in the Lok Sabha, he has also been sent to Rajya Sabha by the party — before he quit to join the BJP in 2019.

The decision came three years after Garima not only came back to claim her place in the palace, but also in the politics of the region. In 2016, claiming to be Sinh’s “lawfully wedded wife”, Garima and her children entered the palace and declared that they would not allow Ameeta in.

By contesting the election himself, Sinh will hope to take the attention away from the family saga while reclaiming the “family legacy” from the Gandhis. Though considered a Gandhi bastion, in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Rahul Gandhi lost to the BJP’s Smriti Irani from here.

Sinh claims it was his father Rananjay Sinh, who won the first election after Independence from here as an Independent candidate, who “offered” the seat to the Gandhis, not the other way round. The senior Sinh later won elections on the Jana Sangh (1969) and Congress tickets (1974).

“It is we who brought the Gandhis here, established them here. It is my homeland and we have a 1,400-year-old history that’s associated with this place. I started my political career from my homeland in 1980 and people welcomed me with open arms. I went on to become minister in different departments and ensured jobs for the people of Amethi,” said Sinh, adding, “In the last phase of my career, I have again got an opportunity to serve my people. Isn’t that enough?”

In 1980, Sinh followed in his father’s footsteps and contested his first election from the Amethi Assembly seat as the Congress (Indira) candidate — and won. In 1985, Sinh won again, getting a record 98 per cent of the votes polled. But in the 1989 election that followed, which he contested as a Janata Dal candidate, he lost to the Congress.

Sinh later joined the BJP. In the 1998 Lok Sabha election, he defeated Satish Sharma of the Congress and but lost to Sonia Gandhi in the 1999 general elections. His wife Ameeta, meanwhile, won the Amethi Assembly seat in 2002 on a BJP ticket.

In 2004, the couple returned to the Congress. Ameeta won the 2004 Assembly by-poll and later the 2007 poll from Amethi. In 2012, she lost to Gayatri Prasad Prajapati of the Samajwadi Party by a close margin.

This election, the Congress has announced former BSP leader Ashish Shukla as its candidate. Shukla, 61, had in 2002 lost to Ameeta, when she was the BJP candidate.

The Samajwadi Party has fielded Prajapati’s wife, Maharaji Devi. Prajapati, who won from Amethi in 2012 and went on to become a minister in the SP government, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a 2017 rape case.

BSP, meanwhile, has fielded Ragini Tiwari, hoping to win over a large chunk of Brahmin votes along with its core Dalit votes.