Acid test for Dimple in perfume capital

Kannauj: From being elected unopposed in the 2012 bypoll to a close shave in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Dimple Yadav’s political career came a full circle in just two years. Pitted against the same rival — BJP’s Subrat Pathak — once more in 2019, she and Samajwadi Party face an acid test in the perfume capital of India.
Dimple had won by a meagre 19,000 votes against Pathak, the state chief of BJP’s youth wing, in 2014. This time though, BSP is backing her and Mayawati has openly embraced her as “bahu”. The presence of a large number of Brahmins and non-Yadav backward voters may help Pathak and make the battle more intense. Besides, Nirmal Tiwari, the BSP candidate in 2014 who had bagged 1.27 lakh votes, has joined the BJP, giving a jolt to the SP-BSP alliance.
The SP has won Kannauj seven times in the past. It has been with the Yadav family since 1999, when Mulayam Singh Yadav won it for the first time. Akhilesh Yadav made his Parliament debut in 2000, when he contested the bypoll from Kannauj, vacated by Mulayam who had won from Mainpuri as well. In 2017 state polls, except Kannauj Sadar, which was won by SP, all the others — Chibramau, Tirwa, Bidhuna (Auriya district) and Rasoolabad (Kanpur Dehat) — went to the BJP.
Kannauj was historically known as Kanyakubja or Mahodya. It had been a great seat of learning and commerce under King Harshvardhan. The name was later changed to Kannauj. Besides this periodical change, nothing much has changed in the district. As the battle for ballot hots up for Monday, April 29, the SP is quick in shifting the blame to BJP. Development here has been stalled by the BJP government, allege SP leaders.
At a recent election meeting, Dimple promised voters to resume projects envisioned by the SP and stalled by BJP. She said Kannauj would be put on the world map. At a roadshow, husband Akhilesh Yadav also tried hard to woo voters by assuring them of ultra-modern amenities.
Perfume exporters of Kannauj admit that the city witnessed development at a brisk pace when Akhilesh was in power.
“At stake here is the future of over 120 big factories and hundreds of smaller ones engaged in bottling perfumes. Over two crore people in the state are directly or indirectly dependent on the attar industry. Largely exported, attar is also used for incense sticks and in cosmetics. During the SP regime, we used to get 22-24 hours of power supply, which has now dipped to 180-20 hours. Though distillation of perfume does not involve electricity, other activities do. The industry is battling for survival,” said Asim Siddiqui, an exporter.