2024 Lok Sabha elections: It's a battle of the scions in Allahabad

Along with the neighbouring Phulpur, the constituency that Jawaharlal Nehru represented in the Lok Sabha(LS), Prayagraj’s Allahabad seat has also been notable for sending luminaries of India’s politics, those who went on to become India’s Prime Ministers and chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh to the Lower House.

For the 2024 battle, the leading contenders are two scions – Congress’ Ujjwal Raman Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Neeraj Tripathi. Ujjwal is the son of former Allahabad LS member Rewati Raman Singh and Neeraj’s father was former UP Assembly Speaker and former West Bengal governor Keshari Nath Tripathi. The seat has traditionally been held by members of upper castes, but has a strong presence of Dalits and extremely backward castes, which has made the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) field Ramesh Kumar Patel.

Ujjwal, a former minister in the Samajwadi Party governments in UP, joined the Congress in April. His father was a two-term SP MP from Allahabad (from 2004 to 2014). The BJP has won the seat on the last two occasions, with Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who had crossed over from the Congress to the BJP, winning the seat in 2019. Neeraj, who is debuting in electoral politics, is a lawyer and a former additional advocate general of UP.

Over the years, Allahabad has elected Purushottam Das Tandon, Lal Bahadur Shastri, V P Singh, Janeshwar Mishra, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, and Murli Manohar Joshi. It has been the site of some interesting battles, such as Congress’ Amitabh Bachchan defeating Bahuguna in 1984 or the 1988 bypoll that marked the emergence of V P Singh as the contender for the PM post. While VP Singh defeated Sunil Shastri, Lal Bahadur Shastri’s son, the BSP’s Kanshi Ram secured a healthy share of votes in that bypoll, which was a sign of things to come with the Congress losing its Dalit support base to the BSP in UP in later years.