For whom the seats will work

Amar Singh is back. The chatter is that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) might field him as its candidate from Moradabad and former member of parliament (MP) from Rampur, Jayaprada from the same constituency.

Jayaprada was expelled from the Samajwadi Party (SP) in 2015 and she announced she would like to join the BJP. But so far, she has not been invited to join the party. However, when posters appeared all over Rampur in July last year, wishing voters

eid mubarak with her pictures on them, it seemed clear that she was ready to become a candidate.

In the meantime, her bête noir, Azam Khan, has announced he might not contest the elections at all. In 2014, Nepal Singh was fielded by the BJP and was elected. If he is not repeated, Jayaprada might get the seat. Actually, the BJP is considering the idea because of Jayaprada’s personal animus against Azam Khan. When she left the SP, she remarked bitterly that SP had no idea how to treat women.

The Congress has declared Raj Babbar as the candidate from Moradabad. Kunwar Sarvesh Kumar Singh is the BJP’s sitting MP in Moradabad though he won by a relatively small margin of around 80,000 votes in 2014 in the middle of a Modi wave. Will the BJP replace him with Amar Singh when Amar Singh is not yet a member of the BJP? But the seat is a challenge for the BJP: The SP is pretty strong and out of five assembly segments, two are with SP. If Amar Singh is fielded, it will make for an interesting contest in a seat which has also been represented by cricketer Azharuddin.