The actor-turned-politician could be fielded from Varanasi, Lucknow, Ghaziabad or Kanpur constituencies, all of which are held by BJP bigwigs.

Lucknow: Rebel BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha is likely to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket from a ‘city constituency’ in Uttar Pradesh, top sources in the SP have told ThePrint.

Talks between the actor-turned-politician and the party are still underway and a formal announcement is yet to be made, but a senior SP leader said that it was only a matter of time.

“The seat is yet to be formalised and talks are still going on, but he will contest on a Samajwadi Party ticket from UP. The party is inclined towards fielding him from one of the city constituencies,” the leader said.

This means Sinha will be one of the SP’s 37 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, under the terms of its alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. Mayawati’s BSP is set to contest 38 seats, while Ajit Singh’s RLD will put up candidates in Mathura, Muzaffarnagar and its home turf of Baghpat. The alliance will not contest the Congress bastions of Amethi and Rae Bareli.

“A few city constituencies are in the SP’s share. With Sinha’s entry, there is a certain glamour quotient that could work in favour of the SP at these places,” the leader quoted above said. These constituencies include Varanasi, Lucknow, Ghaziabad and Kanpur — respectively held by Prime Minster Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh, and senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi.

Sinha had won Patna Sahib by a margin of more than one lakh votes in 2014. He was a union minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA government, in charge of health and family welfare in 2002-03, and of shipping in 2003-04.

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Recent signs

Sinha, a two-time Lok Sabha MP from Bihar’s Patna Sahib constituency, as well as a two-term Rajya Sabha MP, met former UP CM and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav at the party headquarters in Lucknow Tuesday. While both Sinha and SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary claimed it was a courtesy call, the meeting, which went on for over an hour, had stoked speculations about Sinha’s entry into the SP.

Following the closed-door meeting, Sinha discouraged reporters from conjecturing about the meeting, even while he heaped praises on Akhilesh and his father, party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.

In October last year, Sinha, along with former BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, had participated in a Kayastha Sammelan organised by the SP in Lucknow.

Earlier this month, Sinha had also joined a rally comprising opposition leaders organised by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi, where he maintained that there was a huge gap between the promises made by the BJP and the work it had done. At this rally, attended by the heads of nearly all opposition parties in the country, he had also raised concerns about the accountability of PM Modi on the Rafale deal.

Shortly after this rally, Bihar BJP president Nityanand Rai had told reporters that Sinha would not be given a BJP ticket even if he did a “U-turn”.

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