Sitting BJP MP and candidate from Sultanpur Lok Sabha constituency Maneka Gandhi is treading alone in the general elections, adopting the ideology of ‘Ekla Chalo Re”.

The ‘Chhoti Bahu’ of the Gandhi family, is trying her luck for the ninth time in a row, second time from Sultanpur. Maneka has been campaigning here on the development report card for the past 5 years.

Facing a three-cornered contest, Maneka is working 14 hours a day, to counter the challenge of Ram Bhual Nishad of SP and Udraj Verma of BSP.

Not a single leader from BJP’s star campaigners’ list has yet come to give support to Maneka’s election, nor has she requested the party leaders to send any senior leader here, sources said.

Maneka herself has taken up the responsibility of covering around 957 gram panchayats in her constituency. However, today UP Chief minister Yogi Adityanath is slated to address an election meeting in Sultanpur.

Polling in Sultanpur will be held on May 25 in the sixth phase where campaigning will end tomorrow evening but still there was no word whether Varun Gandhi will come to support his mother here. Varun has been denied a BJP ticket this time.

By not inviting BJP star campaigners in the elections, the politics of polarization to some extent has been prevented, a senior BJP leader and Maneka ‘s campaigner claimed.

“On the basis of her five years of work, Manekaji is seeking votes from all castes and groups. She believes that only because of her work, her election boat will sail through this time also,” another BJP leader said.

But the supporters of Maneka made it clear that they will welcome NISHAD party chief and UP minister Sanjay Nishad to counter the INDI alliance candidate Ram Bhuwal Nishad.

This time, the opposition parties have tried their best to corner the BJP, which has won from Sultanpur twice. Along with the alliance candidate, the BSP has also played a new trick here and has made it tough for Maneka.

The BSP has played the backward card here. At the last moment, BSP chief Mayawati created an obstacle for former Union Minister Maneka by giving ticket to Udraj Verma of Kurmi community from here.

Yesterday, in a major development Chandrabhadra Singh alias Sonu, a prominent Thakur politician of the district, joined the Samajwadi Party which somehow can give an edge to the opposition bench. In the 2019 polls, Maneka had won the seat by defeating Chandrabhadra Singh ‘Sonu’, a joint candidate of SP- BSP by a slender margin.

Sonu secured 4,44,670 votes from this seat but failed to defeat Maneka, who pocketed 4,59,196 votes in the last election.

With around 20 per cent minority and 21 per cent dalit votes in the constituency, the upper caste is the dominant factor for any candidate, particularly the Thakurs and Brahmins. OBCs voters could also swing the victory in any direction.

Cooperative sugar mills are the biggest issue here. The present sugar mill has very little sugarcane crushing capacity. Farmers have to go up to Haidergarh (Barabanki) for the sugarcane crushing. There is jam on the main road during the season while the farmer’s cost of transporting sugarcane to the mill is very high. About 20,000 farmers of the area are currently associated with the cooperative sugar mill.

A farmer of Sonar village, says that if the sugar mill could have the capacity to crush at least 50,000 quintals of sugarcane, then the farmer could get relief by taking his sugarcane to Faizabad and Ambedkar Nagar. The cost of transporting sugarcane is high.

Maneka is contesting elections for the second time on BJP ticket from Sultanpur whereas Samajwadi Party candidate Ram Bhuwal Nishad, a native of Gorakhpur region, was defeated by BJP’s Ravi Kishan in Gorakhpur LS constituency. Bhuwal was with the BJP and before that with the Bahujan Samaj Party. Ram Bhuwal is a two-time MLA and was minister in the BSP regime.

A total of 9 candidates are in the fray for Sultanpur Lok Sabha seat. The BSP has fielded Udraj Verma. Verma was elected District Panchayat member for the first time in the last elections.

As per the past record, In the five assembly segments of the Lok Sabha seat, except for Isauli, all the four segments Sultanpur, Sultanpur Sadar, Lambhua and Kadipur seats have been won by the BJP in the 2022 assembly polls.

In the Lok Sabha polls: in 2014, this seat was won by Varun Gandhi of the BJP and in 2019, he was shifted to Pilibhit while his mother Maneka was shifted here. However, Congress leaders won the seat most of the times including in 2009, when Sanjay Singh got elected as a Congress member.

Sanjay Singh and his wife Amita contested in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections respectively on Congress ticket, but both lost their sureties by just getting around 4 per cent of the votes.