With about 18 weeks to go for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the state is being barnstormed by one notable politician after another.
Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi (Vadra) interestingly took the lead -- she has been in UP for one reason (the Lakhimpur Kheri incident) or the other (the death of a sanitation worker in police custody in Agra) -- forcing the Bharatiya Janata Party's Narendra Damodardas Modi to step up the tempo of his visits to a crucial electoral state for the BJP before the Lok Sabha election in 2024.
Amit Anilchandra Shah, the BJP's political Chanakya, made his first election-linked visit to Lucknow on Friday, a week after his 57th birthday, on a day when Gandhi (Vadra) was also in the state.
Please click on the images for a better look at Amitbhai and Priyankaben's visits.
IMAGE: Shah calibrated the BJP's trilogy of electoral wins -- the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019 and the assembly election in 2019 -- so party leaders and workers eagerly look to him to chart out the party's plan to retain power in Lucknow.
Photograph: Naeem Ansari/ANI Photo
IMAGE: Priyanka meets family members of farmers who committed suicide due to debts in Lalitpur district.
Reaching out in times of trouble seems to be her mantra of winning friends and influencing people.
Photograph: PTI Photo
IMAGE: Shah, it is believed, won't have the same freedom that he did in 2017 in choosing candidates for the March 2022 assembly election, thanks to Ajay Mohan Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath's politically formidable presence.
The UP chief minister is said to have thwarted attempts by the Modi-Shah combine to replace him earlier this year and will no doubt have an influential say in determining the roster of BJP nominees -- those he can count on for support should Modi-Shah force him to move out of Lucknow after the poll.
Photograph: PTI Photo
IMAGE: Priyanka interacts with porters at the Charbagh railway station in Lucknow.
If Priyanka is anointed the Congress's chief ministerial nominee, the UP assembly election campaign will take an interesting detour from the expected BJP versus Samajwadi Party (and allies) versus Bahujan Samaj Party versus Rashtriya Lok Dal storyline.
Photograph: PTI Photo
IMAGE: How often do you see a state chief minister go to the airport to receive a Union home minister even if he is the number two power centre in the Republic?
Yogi's presence at the Chaudhary Charan Singh international airport in Lucknow on Friday to receive Shah may signal the CM's desire for a rapprochement lest the Modi-Shah team checkmate his electoral intentions.
But then again, this is politics. Nothing ever quite seems what it does.
Photograph: PTI Photo
IMAGE: A member of the Nehru family has never been in the reckoning to wield power in Lucknow.
41 years ago, the Congress legislature party wanted Priyanka's uncle Sanjay Gandhi to be UP chief minister after the party won the 1980 assembly election, but her grandmother turned down their request, preferring Vishwanath Pratap Singh as CM.
Indira Gandhi may have come to regret her decision. Had Sanjay been running UP from the state government offices in Lucknow, he would not have perished in the air crash on June 23, 1980.
Photograph: PTI Photo
Photographs curated by Anant Salvi/Rediff.com
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
Yogi as CM in '22 must for Modi as PM in '24: Shah
'One day I have to': Priyanka on contesting polls
A Week In The Life of Priyanka Gandhi
'Yogi is more of a challenge to Amit Shah than Modi'
UP 2022 is so IMPORTANT for Modi