Uma Bharti may contest LS poll from UP's Amroha

Bharatiya Janata Party Vice-President Uma Bharti, a sitting MLA from Uttar Pradesh, is likely to contest the next Lok Sabha election from Amroha in Uttar Pradesh.

"The BJP is seriously considering fielding Bharti, a prominent face of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, from Amroha seat in Uttar Pradesh," sources close to her told PTI today.

The former Madhya Pradesh chief minister forayed into Uttar Pradesh poll politics last year and was elected from Charkhari assembly constituency. Charkhari is part of Bundelkhand, a backward region spread over both the states.

BJP President Rajnath Singh, who inducted Bharti in his new team announced last month, has already taken her consent for Amroha in north-west Uttar Pradesh. Aligarh, too, is on the radar of the BJP leadership for her, they said.

The sources denied reports that the 53-year-old firebrand leader may contest the Lok Sabha polls from Bhopal, a seat which she won in 1999.      

The party wants to utilise her services in Uttar Pradesh, a state having the maximum (80) Lok Sabha seats and which also gave birth to the Ram temple movement, to cash in on her image as a top Hindutva leader, they said.

The BJP had deputed her in Uttar Pradesh as star campaigner for the 2012 assembly polls after her return to the party fold in 2011 and was tasked with reviving the saffron outfit in the crucial northern state. However, there was no significant turnround in BJP's fortunes in UP and the party came a distant third after SP and Mayawati-led BSP.

Bharti, who was a minister in the Vajpayee government, left BJP in 2005 and floated her own outfit Bhartiya Janshakti Party. She returned to BJP two years ago.

Though she lost her first Parliamentary election in 1984, Bharti never looked back and won the Lok Sabha polls from Khajuraho in 1989, 1991, 1996 and 1998.

Image: Uma Bharti