Sunset at high noon for 2 prominent UP leaders

Lucknow, May 24 (IANS) It was sunset at high noon for two leaders in Uttar Pradesh who were planning to take their political ambitions to another level. Both had floated their own parties and were confident of making their presence felt in the Lok Sabha elections.

Shivpal Yadav, President of Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia (PSPL), and Raghuraj Pratap Singh a.k.a. Raja Bhaiyya, President of Jansatta Party, have not only failed to make a mark in the elections but their vote count has further decimated their political stature.

Shivpal Yadav formed the PSPL last year after his differences with nephew Akhilesh Yadav, president of Samajwadi Party (SP), reached a point of no return. Though Shivpal Yadav is still a SP legislator, he contested the Ferozabad seat on a PSPL ticket against his other nephew Akshay Yadav.

Political analysts believed that Shivpal Yadav may or may not win seats for his party, but he would do some damage to the SP. The apprehensions have proved right.

Though Shivpal Yadav himself failed to win the Ferozabad seat, he ensured Akshay Yadav's defeat as well. The nephew polled 4.67 lakh votes, while Shivpal Yadav garnered only 91,869 votes to stand third in the race. The BJP candidate Chandra Sen won the seat.

PSPL candidates in other constituencies also failed to go beyond a few thousand votes in these elections.

If the PSPL chief's ability to turn support into votes is now being questioned by his b?te noire Akhilesh Yadav's supporters, it is a dead end for those who thought that he had a long way to go in the state politics.

The other leader who has proved to be a damp squib in these elections is Raja Bhaiyya and his Jansatta Party.

The the five-time MLA from Kunda, who held sway over the Pratapgarh and Kaushambhi till now, could not even ensure a decent vote share for his candidates in these constituencies.

In Pratapgarh, Jansatta Party candidate Akshay Pratap Singh finished at the fourth position with merely 46,963 votes.

The Party candidate in Kaushambhi, Shailendra Kumar fared better at the third position with 1.56 lakh votes.

Raja Bhaiyya's invincibility too is now under cloud.

Both, Shivpal Yadav and Raja Bhaiyya, had played a crucial role as king makers in state politics.

While Shivpal Yadav engineered a split in the BSP in 2003 to cobble up a majority for the government headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh (UP), Raja Bhaiyya was the architect of the splits in the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that saved the state's Kalyan Singh government in 1997, when the BSP pulled out of the coalition.

He was the first independent MLA to appointed as a Cabinet minister in the Kalyan Singh government, but switched to the SP in 2003 to become a minister in the Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh Yadav governments as well.

He snapped ties with the SP in April, when Akhilesh Yadav joined hands with the BSP. It was under the BSP regime in 2002 that Raja Bhaiyya was sent to jail under POTA.