The three main contenders for the Banda Lok Sabha seat in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh were once close friends and associated with the Samajwadi Party.

Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance candidate Shyama Charan Gupta, the Congress’s Bal Kumar Patel and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate RK Singh Patel all won their first Lok Sabha election on the Samajwadi Party ticket.

“They were together till 2009 before they fell out and decided to chart their own political course,” said Durgesh Yadav, a senior lawyer and political analyst in Banda.

Their much talked about bonhomie gave way to bitterness, which was reflected in their actions and words in subsequent Lok Sabha and assembly elections.

“They traded barbs for varied reasons,” said an alliance leader.

“Their rivalry at the personal level has spiced up the election scene in Banda-Chitrakoot. It is a battle of prestige,” said an SP leader close to Gupta.

“Maybe, they were friends once, but now they are in different political outfits and fighting elections with different strategies,” he added.

They are no longer on talking terms. Their campaign schedule is such that they do not come face to face. Nevertheless, they leave no opportunity to take each other on.

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RK Singh Patel, whose political rise could be attributed to the might of Dadua and Bal Kumar Patel, won his first Lok Sabha election on the Samajwadi Party ticket from Banda in 2009. The same year, Bal Kumar won the Mirzapur Lok Sabha seat.

“It (the falling out) was bound to happen. The thread binding them together was dacoit Shiv Kumar Dadua (Bal Kumar Patel’s brother). Dadua was killed in 2007. (Now) each of them have their own political ambitions,” said Yadav, particularly referring to Bal Kumar and RK Singh Patel.

RK Singh Patel won two assembly elections (2002 and 2007) and became a minister in the Mayawati cabinet.

Bal Kumar’s only electoral success came in 2009 when he won the Mirzapur seat on an SP ticket. The seat was once held by former bandit queen Phoolan Devi before she was killed in 2001.

RK Singh Patel and Bal Kumar contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on the BSP and SP tickets respectively but they lost.

RK Singh Patel joined the BJP just ahead of 2017 assembly election and was fielded from Manikpur where he defeated Dadua’s son Veer Singh.

Beedi baron Shyama Charan Gupta was first elected to the Lok Sabha from Banda on an SP ticket in 2004. In 2014, he won the Allahabad parliamentary seat as a BJP candidate. He returned to the SP just before the 2019 parliamentary poll.

Another friend Bhairon Prasad Mishra lost to RK Singh Patel in the ticket race.

Mishra staged a sit-in at the SP office, seeking the reason for denying him a ticket.

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First Published: May 01, 2019 14:54 IST