Son of Indira’s ex-PS eyes win from Nehru’s Phulpur

PHULPUR (ALLAHABAD): For many years, Indira Gandhi routinely lent an ear to Allahabad-based civil servant J N Misra, later her personal secretary, for all poll alignments, key office assignments, and even for a comeback after the Emergency.
Now, 40 years later, the Congress has fielded Misra’s son, Manish, an MBA from Delhi, as its candidate from Phulpur, a seat once represented by Indira’s father Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister.

As the father-son duo move around Jamunipur, their own village in Phulpur, they are surrounded by octogenarians, retired government employees and school teachers. Many of them recollect his long tenure with Indian Railways.

While Misra senior was serving as a young additional district magistrate in Varanasi in 1975, the then Union railway minister Kamlapati Tripathi took him to Delhi as his special assistant.

“I created thousands of jobs in the Railways to help people from the hinterlands; brought several train halts to help young girls attend faraway colleges. I also remember how many of you would hide behind trees and homes in long queues to meet me, but then you dug a grave for Congress,” Misra senior tells the village folk.


Family has kept its connect with Phulpur intact

The family has kept its connection with Phulpur intact by starting the small, private Nehru Gram Bharati University in Jamunipur. Misra is its chancellor. In their public addresses, the father and son frequently heap praise on Indira’s younger son, the late Sanjay Gandhi. They recollect the famous fivepoint programme — including family planning, tree plantation, ending the dowry system and eradicating the caste system — that he had launched.

“The time is ripe for Varun to step into his father Sanjay’s shoes again. Varun is already feeling uncomfortable in the BJP. He’s addressing students in universities. That is exactly what Sanjay would do to woo the youth. And the BJP wants to kill universities. Sooner or later, Varun will come back to the family and join his brother Rahul, and they will take on the ruling government to form the next Congress government,” says Misra senior.

The Misra family also believes the caste equations in UP have changed fast since 2014. “We Brahmins are a dominant community. Our community had supported the BJP in 2014 in huge numbers but felt cheated while they focused on OBC candidates. Both Rahul and Priyanka conceived a big move in this Phulpur bypoll to field a Brahmin like me and forced BJP and SP to field OBC Patel candidates yet again. This will usher in a new change in UP,” Manish insists.

Though the Congress and SP offices on Allahabad’s Georgetown Street stand within 50 metres of each other, the family doesn’t want to talk about the 2017 alliance and the disaster that followed. They also downplay the threat of a temporary SPBSP arrangement in consolidating the dalit and Yadav vote banks for the bypolls, saying 1.5 lakh Muslims and three lakh Brahmins in Phulpur will rally behind Congress following their alienation by the ruling party.