Kanpur, 14 March: Veteran leader Ajay Kapoor, who was MLA from Congress party for three consecutive terms, joined BJP on Wednesday. After this, debate intensified in political corridors that Ajay Kapoor can be made BJP candidate from Kanpur Nagar Lok Sabha seat, but the inside story is that Uttar Pradesh Assembly Speaker Satish Mahana’s strategy is behind getting Ajay Kapoor inducted in BJP. He has made this move to strengthen his claim on Kanpur seat.
The special thing is that the Legislative Assembly Speaker and Ajay Kapoor are also relatives.
BJP has expressed confidence in the present MP Devendra Singh Bhole on Akbarpur, one of the two Lok Sabha seats of Kanpur city, but perhaps no one knows yet who will be the candidate on the city seat. Veteran BJP leader Satyadev Pachauri is currently the MP on this seat and he too is making rounds from Lucknow to Delhi to stake his claim.
Here on Wednesday, Congress National Secretary Ajay Kapoor acquired membership of BJP in Delhi. This started a round of speculations that Ajay Kapoor had joined BJP to contest elections from Kanpur Lok Sabha seat. At the same time, political arithmetic started appearing in the camp of BJP leaders like Satyadev Pachauri, MLA Surendra Maithani, Dinesh Awasthi, Ramesh Awasthi etc. who are flexing their muscles to contest from Kanpur seat.
Meanwhile, all these politicians intensified their lobbying, but according to inside sources, the news that is being received is that in order to make a stronger claim against all the above mentioned politicians, eight consecutive time MLA and Assembly Speaker Satish Mahana has included his relative Ajay Kapoor in BJP, who is almost doing Congress politics for 35 years. Ajay Kapoor was MLA from two different assembly seats for three consecutive terms and was giving a good fight to BJP from Kidwai Nagar seat twice. Not only this, he is also popular in the city and is also a big businessman.
Mahana can achieve a big victory: Ajay Kapoor joins BJP and Satish Mahana gets the Lok Sabha ticket, then there can be a possibility of Mahana getting a big victory. The reason behind this is that Ajay Kapoor has been contesting elections from Govindpur and Kidwai Nagar seats.
Apart from both the assembly seats, he has a good number of supporters in other assembly seats also. The Assembly Speaker was also in the mayoral election.
During the mayor election last year, many stalwarts in the BJP fought tooth and nail for the ticket of their wife or daughter. They tried their best, but did not get success.
At the same time, Assembly Speaker Satish Mahana had played an important role in unilaterally getting the ticket for current Mayor Pramila Pandey and making her mayor again. By that time it was almost clear that Satish Mahana could contest the Lok Sabha elections, although he had contested once, but had to face defeat at the hands of Congress’s Shriprakash Jaiswal. It is a different matter that that period was different and now the period is more in favor of BJP. That is why Satish Mahana seems to be successful in almost completely weakening Congress in Kanpur by bringing Ajay Kapoor to BJP in a bid to reach Delhi.
