Uma Bharati wants to take on Sonia in Rae Bareli

In a bid to regain lost glory, Uma Bharati has made a strong pitch to project her candidature against Congress President Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli.

Bharati’s career never quite took off after the BJP forced her to resign as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister in August 2004, after an arrest warrant was issued against her in a riot case in Hubli.

She has floundered in the last one decade, floating her own party — the Bharatiya Janshakti Party — without any significant electoral success. She finally clawed her way back into the BJP in June 2011, and was assigned to work in Uttar Pradesh. She is presently a member of the UP Assembly.

The BJP has fielded her this year from the Jhansi Lok Sabha seat but the ambitious leader clearly misses the limelight. Hence, her “younger brother and guru” Ramdev has taken it upon himself to project her as the party’s official candidate against Sonia.

“Uma Bharati defeated Digvijaya Singh. She has all the credentials to take on Sonia Gandhi. If the party fields her, I will campaign for her and send Sonia Gandhi back to her mother’s country,” said Ramdev.

Uma did not demur, offering a coy caveat to Ramdev’s proposal. “It is for the party to decide,” she said. “Ramdev is like a younger brother and guru to me. He has given a proposal. The party has to consider it.”

Her projection against Sonia will elevate Bharati’s stature in the same manner as Sushma Swaraj’s feisty challenge to the Congress President in Bellary in the 1998 general elections.

Although Bharati had campaigned furiously against Sonia in 2006 when she had quit the Lok Sabha in the wake of the Office of Profit controversy, her party managed to poll less than 5,000 votes in Rae Bareli.

The Congress President is comfortably poised in her pocket borough even in the ongoing elections. But what is making the BJP consider Bharati’s self-projection is that she is capable of putting up a credible show.

Moreover, a projection of Bharati has the potential to counter Swaraj, who has emerged as the voice of dissent against Narendra Modi’s supremacy of late, and her associate, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Bharati is a challenger to Chauhan and can be used in future to offset the balance of power Chauhan and Swaraj have carefully struck in Madhya Pradesh.

All things considered, Bharati’s latest venture may not be as unsuccessful as most of her political efforts in the last one decade. The firebrand leader may just be back in business after a decade-long sanyaas .

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