For over three decades, the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat has been a BJP bastion, with its Hindutva pull centred around the Gorakhnath Math. In a brief interlude, the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine had emerged victorious in the 2018 byelection, thanks to its superior caste arithmetic. Six years later, the SP-Congress alliance is hoping to repeat this success, amid discontent fuelled by inflation and unemployment, fatigue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reign, and BSP voters looking beyond their traditional choice.
The incumbent MP of Gorakhpur, BJP’s Ravi Kishan, is once again in fray. He is facing Samajwadi Party’s Kajal Nishad, who has been unsuccessfully contesting elections since 2012. Both have a foot in the entertainment industry - Ms. Nishad is a TV actress and Mr. Kishan, a Bhojpuri superstar, has earned acclaim for his recent roles in Netflix series Mamla Legal Hai and the Amir Khan production Laapataa Ladies. The commonalities end here though. The two are running campaigns that are starkly different in tone, tenor and scale.
