Elections have come and gone, governments have changed, friends have turned rivals, and the Yogi Adityanath has been tomtomming how it has tamed bahubalis. But if there is one seat that has remained untouched by these power upheavals, for six Assembly elections now, it is Kunda. And, even if the talk of his crocodile pond is now an urban legend, if there is one king of Kunda, it is Raghuraj Pratap Singh a.k.a Raja Bhaiya.
This time though, there is a twist in the plot. After a gap of almost 15 years (or the last three Assembly polls), the Samajwadi Party has fielded a candidate against the 52-year-old six-term MLA – and it is a former close aide of Singh’s, Gulshan Yadav, 38.
Kunda, which falls in Pratapgarh district, votes on February 27.
On Thursday, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav turned up in person in Pratapgarh to campaign for Gulshan, and said this time people will vote for “change”. Just before the Assembly elections were announced, at a function in the district, he had responded to questions about Singh with the snub “Raja Bhaiya, who?”
आज सपा राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष माननीय अखिलेश यादव जी के कुंडा आगमन पर आशीर्वाद प्राप्त किया तथा मंच साझा किया।
माननीय राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष जी का बहुत-बहुत धन्यवाद एवं आभार। pic.twitter.com/8xAFMvB5ir
— Gulshan Yadav (@gulshankunda) February 24, 2022
However, it is not easy to shut out the 52-year-old, as several parties have realised over the years. In November, as talk swirled about his ties with the SP, Singh had managed to secure an audience with the increasingly reclusive Mulayam Singh Yadav on the latter’s birthday, and tweeted a picture of the same.
Singh still claims immense respect for the SP patron. The story goes that things soured between him and the SP after Akhilesh tied up with the BSP for the 2019 parliamentary elections despite his objections. The Mayawati government, in 2003 and then in 2007-2012, had cracked down on Singh, booking him in numerous criminal cases, including under the stringent POTA. He was jailed, and has talked about how he took a pledge not to see his children born during the period till he came out.
Raghuraj Pratap Singh campaigns in Babaganj constituency on Thursday. (Photo: Twitter/@JSDL_Official )
Meanwhile, he kept winning Kunda. All his six wins have been as an Independent, garnering at least 60% of the votes. In 2002, that went as high as 82.13%. Thakurs, the community to which Singh belongs, number only 18,000 among 3.51 lakh voters in Kunda. The most dominant are the Yadavs (80,000), followed by Patels (65,000) and SCs (65,000).
As per police, he has around 40 criminal cases against him (in his affidavit, he declared only one was pending).
As MLA, Singh alternatively supported the BJP and SP governments, and despite being an Independent, found a ministerial berth under as many as five CMs (Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh and Ram Prakash Gupta of the BJP, and Mulayam and Akhilesh). In the 2018 Rajya Sabha elections, while with the SP, he was alleged to have cross-voted for the BJP, even tweeting while voting was on that his support for the SP did not mean he would back the BSP nominee. Soon after the vote, Singh had gone to meet Adityanath and said they discussed issues pertaining to Kunda.
This time Singh is contesting on the ticket of the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik Party, which he floated in November 2018.
His aide-turned-rival Gulshan is also a history-sheeter, with 21 cases against him, including one filed recently over comments against Singh. Gulshan’s younger brother Chabinath, who is also in the SP, got out on bail recently, while his wife Seema is the Kunda Nagar Panchayat chairperson.
The Pratapgarh police have deployed six policemen for Gulshan’s security after he claimed a threat to his life. Alleging Singh’s hand, he says: “I have been regularly getting threats over the phone.” He denies he was ever associated with Singh.
However, both Singh and Gulshan are co-accused in one of the biggest cases against the MLA, that of the murder of DySP Zia-ul-Haq. Then posted as Circle Officer, Pratapgarh, Zia-ul-Haq was killed on March 2, 2013, while visiting a village over the murder of its pradhan. Singh, then the Food and Civil Supplies Minister under the Akhilesh government, resigned but claimed he had been framed.
In July 2013, the CBI closed the case, thus clearing Singh, Gulshan and the others. Singh was re-inducted as minister. On a plea by Haq’s wife Parveen Azad, the court ordered further investigation, which is still pending.
Interestingly, at the time, Adityanath, then the Gorakhpur MP and a fellow Thakur, backed Singh, even threatening a stir – going against the BJP line.
The BJP’s Kunda candidate, Sindhuja Mishra Senani, says everyone knows about Singh and Gulshan’s “criminal” activities. A High Court lawyer, Senani had in 2012 contested from a constituency in Pratapgarh on a BSP ticket, and lost.
“Gulshan Yadav is a product of him (Singh). One is fighting to get supremacy and the other is fighting the election to retain his supremacy. They are not fighting for the public,” she says.
Among voters too, few doubt that. However, chances are, that won’t matter come March 10.
Raja’s run
1993: 89,473 votes
1996: 98,700 votes
2002: 88,446 votes
2007: 73,732 votes
2012: 1,11,391 votes
2017: 1,36,597 votes