New Delhi: Former Congress leader and minister in Maharashtra’s Congress government Kripa Shankar Singh, who ventured into his birthplace Jaunpur’s politics for the first time in his four-decade political career on a BJP ticket, is trailing by over 22,000 votes.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate, Babu Singh Kushwaha, is in the lead.
Singh moved to Mumbai from Jaunpur in the 1980s after he failed to clear his class XII exams. He tried his hand at various jobs before he chanced on politics. He was reportedly picked up by former president Pratibha Patel, who appointed him as secretary in the Maharashtra Congress.
This was a time when North Indians faced considerable opposition in Maharashtra with the Shiv Sena’s “son of the soil” politics holding sway in the state. Yet, he rapidly climbed the ranks — finally becoming minister of state for home in the Congress-led Maharashtra government in 1999.
In 2012, while he was the Mumbai Congress chief, Singh was booked by the police in a case of disproportionate assets to the tune of Rs 230 crore, and came under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate. In 2021, even as the cases continued, Singh joined the BJP, and became the party’s state unit vice-president.
The odds, it seems, were stacked against Singh as he was considered an “outsider” having been “air-dropped” into Jaunpur’s politics at the cost of local BJP leaders. As a local BJP leader had said, “Pata nahi Kripa par kiski kripa huyi (Don’t know whose grace was bestowed upon Kripa) Party cadres are very demoralised. When the BJP is in a dominant position, it should allow local leaders to rise — this increases its strength on the ground. But they have done just the opposite.”
There was also the Dhananjay Singh factor. A popular strongman of Jaunpur, Dhananjay enjoys enormous influence over the Thakur population in the constituency. He was behind bars, which eliminated him from the electoral fray. The contest was a bipolar one between Singh and Samajwadi Party’s Babu Singh Kushwaha.
However, the BSP put up Dhananjay Singh’s wife, Srikala Reddy, the sitting zila parishad chairperson of Jaunpur, as a surprise candidate. This was considered a blow to Singh as Srikala’s candidature, a proxy for her husband, would eat into the BJP’s Thakur vote.
But in yet another surprise move, the BSP withdrew Srikala, and announced its sitting MP Shyam Singh Yadav as its candidate. In 2019, the BSP and SP were in an alliance, and BSP’s Yadav had won Jaunpur. However, with the BSP contesting independently this time, it was expected that Yadav would eat into SP votes in the constituency, thereby helping Singh.
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