Bharti questions BJP's choice for Raebareli seat

The BJP’s woes in Uttar Pradesh seem to be far from over, with Uma Bharti questioning the party’s decision of choosing new entrant Ajay Agarwal over her to contest against Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Raebareli.

However, Bharti had put forth a condition, of contesting from Jhansi as well as Raebareli.

On Monday, the BJP had announced that lawyer Agarwal, who had a political stint with the Samajwadi Party as well, would be contesting against Sonia from the Gandhi family constituency.  Prior to the decision, some leaders and yoga guru Baba Ramdev were pushing for Bharti’s name for the high-profile constituency.

The former Madhya Pradesh chief minister said that she had conveyed her wish to party president Rajnath Singh.  “I told him that I cannot leave Jhansi as I have already been campaigning there for quite a while. At the same time, I expressed willingness to contest from Raebareli in addition to Jhansi,” she told a news agency over phone from Jhansi.

It is learnt that her move was checkmated by prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s aide and UP in-charge Amit Shah, who was of the view that except for the Gujarat chief minister no one else should be allowed to contest from two seats at the same time. She is believed to have taken the same argument to push her candidature from twin constituencies.