Will Rajnath Singh's Vajpayee card help BJP win Lucknow

Lucknow: After shifting his battleground from Ghaziabad to Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow, Bharatiya Janata Party (Bjp) President Rajnath Singh on Wednesday kick started his electoral campaign for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The chief of the saffron party is on a three-day visit to Lucknow, which goes to polls on April 30. Singh acquired the 'Karmabhoomi' of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari after holding brainstorming sessions with the incumbent MP Lalji Tandon. In his first speech as the BJP's candidate in the city of 'nawabs', Singh said, "I have come to contest from the constituency of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee." Interestingly, he was accompained by Vajpayee's four-decade-old aide Shiv Kumar. Highly banking upon Vajpayee's legacy, Rajnath Singh chanted his name "11 times" during his speech as his name evokes a lot of respect. Will Rajnath Singh be able to carry forward Vajpayee's legacy? The former prime minister represented the city in the Lok Sabha thrice. Addressing the media in the UP capital, Singh presented himself as an inheritor of Vajpayee's legacy and said that he promises to fulfill Vajpayee's dreams of developing Lucknow as bio-tech city. According to NDTV, Singh chose to contest from Lucknow with an aim to position himself as more acceptable than Narendra Modi. Singh plans to meet top Muslim clerics and visit education centres run by members of the community. And at his press conference, he said, "There will be no bias against anyone. I seek the support of minority voters." Singh had recently reached out to Muslim voters by promising that the BJP would "apologise if it ever made a mistake". The attempt is to do what Narendra Modi cannot do. If he wins, Vajpayee's coveted legacy could be his, say sources in the BJP. Vajpayee had a support of around 20 percent Muslims in the Lucknow constituency. In 2004, in a rare show of solidarity for a BJP leader, Muslim clerics recited the holy Quran for Vajpayee's win at the BJP office here, said the NDTV report. Because of Modi's hardliner image, Muslims are seen as wary of voting for the BJP. But in Lucknow, minority voters say they are not averse to voting for Rajnath Singh. They hope that a win from Vajpayee's constituency will improve his chance of positioning himself as an alternative for the prime minister's post. The BJP chief has stoutly denied that prime ministerial ambitions were behind his picking Lucknow as his constituency. Lucknow has some 450,000 Muslims, 350,000 Brahmins, 150,000 Vaishyas, 125,000 Kayasths, 100,000 each Yadavs and Dalits, 60,000 Thakurs and a sizeable presence of people from Uttarakhand (175,000 votes).