Phulpur, a prestigious seat which sent India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to parliament, became an experiment for SP-BSP in the bypoll last year.
Last year, Phulpur Lok Sabha in Allahabad district (now Prayagraj) became an experiment for Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) - enemies for more than two decades - as the two parties came together to stop the BJP juggernaut in the bypoll. With a new alliance and caste calculation, SP-BSP was able to stop snatch the Lok Sabha seat vacated by Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.
The formula is now implemented across the state with SP-BSP-RLD alliance contesting jointly on 78 seats.
One of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, Phulpur is a prestigious seat which sent India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to parliament. After his demise in 1962, his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was elected from here twice. Later, socialist leader Janeshwar Mishra former Prime Minister VP Singh was also elected from here.
In Phulpur, represented by Nehru in Lok Sabha thrice, the Congress is now a spent force. The Congress last won from here in 1984 and in 2014 its celebrity candidate cricketer Mohammad Kaif was not even able to secure his deposit. He could only get a little more than 58,000 votes.
The SP won the seat for four consecutive terms and held it between 1996 to 2004 until it lost to BSP in 2009.
In 2014, Keshav Prasad Maurya, now UP's deputy CM, became the first BJP candidate to win from Phulpur. The BJP, however, lost in the bypoll in 2018 with SP and BSP fielded a joint candidate - Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel - against BJP's Kaushalendra Singh Patel.
However this time, the SP has dropped Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel and has instead fielded Pandhari Yadav. He is facing BJP's Keshri Devi Patel and Pankaj Niranjan of the Congress.
The Patel community is an important electoral base and Keshri Devi Patel is said to be a strong leader of Patels, and having served multiple time as zila panchayat president in Allahabad. He is said to have a strong hold over voters at the grass-roots level.
The prestigious battle seat is seeing a battle of political turncoats this election as majority of the main candidates are fighting polls after having switched party allegiance.
"She is fighting for BJP, but she was earlier with the BSP. Patel fought the Lok Sabha elections in 2004 on a BSP ticket but had lost to SP candidate Atiq Ahmed (by over 64,000 votes)," Senior Congress leader from Allahabad, Abhay Awasthi said.
Pankaj Niranjan, a Patel leader from Apna Dal, is fighting on a Congress ticket. He is a son-in-law of Apna Dal founder late Sonelal Patel, and the grand old party is seeking to woo Patel voters with him as the candidate.
Fourteen candidates are testing their fortunes in the election here due on May 12.
Phulpur Lok Sabha seat, which Nehru had won in 1952, 1957 and 1962 consists of five assembly segments -- Phaphamau, Soraon (SC), Phulpur, Allahabad West and Allahabad North.
UP is facing a triangular battle between the BJP, the Congress and BSP-SP-RLD alliance. Under the alliance's seat-sharing formula, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is contesting on 38 Lok Sabha seats of the total 80 seats, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party on 37 seats and the Chaudhary Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on three seats. The alliance has left two for Congress' Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and Rahul Gandhi (Amethi).
In sixth phase of Lok Sabha polling, 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh - Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Phulpur, Allahabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Shrawasti, Domariyaganj, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Lalganj, Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Machhlishahr and Bhadohi - are going for polls.
Of these seats, 13 were won by the BJP in 2014 elections with only Azamgarh going to the Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The counting of votes of the Lok Sabha election 2019 will be conducted on May 23.
(With PTI inputs)
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