Amethi: Smriti Irani has done what Maneka Gandhi couldn't 35 years earlier

Maneka's attempt to wrest 'Sanjay's seat' from Rajiv Gandhi ended in failure but three-and-a-half decades later Smriti Irani delivered her redemption song

It was March 1982, two years after her husband Sanjay’s death, when Maneka Gandhi walked out of Indira Gandhi’s Safdarjung Road residence in New Delhi. Two years after being “forced out”, Maneka Gandhi would make her electoral debut. Her battleground was Amethi and she hoped to defeat her brother-in-law Rajiv Gandhi. After all, Amethi became a Gandhi pocket-borough only after her husband Sanjay won the seat in 1980, with a 55 per cent vote share, defeating his nearest Janata Dal rival by a margin of over 100,000 votes.  And Rajiv Gandhi would make his electoral debut in 1981 from Amethi