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    Jaya Prada & Azam Khan’s 10-year-old feud continues as they battle it out at Rampur again

    Synopsis

    Both are bitter rivals now, with Jaya Prada recently saying that Allauddin Khilji’s character reminded her of Azam Khan

    battle
    Azam Khan had taunted Jaya Prada as a nachneganne wali (dancer-singer).
    New Delhi: From bringing her to Rampur in 2004 to helping her win her first Lok Sabha election, working his best to ensure her defeat in 2009 in vain, to now both squaring up against each other in Rampur -- Mohammad Azam Khan from the Samajwadi Party and Jaya Prada from BJP promise a riveting contest in this minority dominated seat in UP.

    “They had to import a candidate to my constituency,” Khan said on Wednesday, in his first comments after BJP announced Jaya Prada as its candidate on Tuesday. This was, however, not the tone in 2004 when Khan got her an SP ticket from Rampur, from where he has been a ninetime MLA, and sought votes for her, saying it was his pride that was at stake.

    She created history by winning the seat for the first time for SP, defeating heavyweight Congress sitting MP Begum Noor Bano by 85,000 votes. But by 2009, things had turned sour between Khan and Jaya Prada as the former was angry over Amar Singh’s influence on her, and Khan held Singh responsible for what he termed a “disastrous” tie-up between Mulayam Singh and Kalyan Singh.

    Khan blocked Jaya Prada’s ticket but ended up being expelled from the SP for anti-party activities. Jaya Prada won, albeit with a lesser margin of 31,000 votes, thanks to Khan actively working to ensure her defeat.

    Cut to 2014 elections, and Khan was back in the SP, much stronger than before and ensured that Jaya Prada wasn’t fielded from Rampur again. She went on to contest from Bijnore on a RLD ticket and lost her deposit and slipped into political oblivion.

    “I cannot live without Rampur,” she said on Tuesday after joining the BJP as the party sees her as the best bet to take on Azam Khan who is fighting his first Lok Sabha election from Rampur. “She hasn’t even visited Rampur once since 2014, and has even closed her office here,” a close aide of Azam Khan told ET.

    Both are bitter rivals now, with Jaya Prada recently saying that Allauddin Khilji’s character reminded her of Azam Khan while the latter had taunted her as a nachneganne wali (dancer-singer).

    Rampur in western UP is a minority-dominated Lok Sabha constituency which was a Congress stronghold for long from 1952 to 1989 before the BJP won it for the first time in 1991. Congress however wrested it back in 1996 through Begum Noor Bano. In 1998, BJP's Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi won the seat , but the next year, Begum Noor Bano got it back for the Congress again. The Samajwadi Party made its entry in Rampur in 2004 by fielding Jaya Prada who defeated Noor Bano by a big margin.

    Congress has not fielded Noor Bano this time from Rampur making it virtually a direct fight between Jaya Prada and Azam Khan who is a nine-time MLA from the Rampur assembly seat.

    “Jaya Prada is a two-time MP from Rampur -- is she an outsider? We are fighting this election on the issue of women pride and self-respect of Jaya Prada ji, something which Azam Khan has always been opposed to,” BJP’s UP spokesperson Chandra Mohan, who has been working closely in Rampur, told ET.

    He said Rampur’s election is about “freeing Rampur from the lawless clutches” of Azam Khan and about BJP’s promise of development against Khan’s recklessness. The war of words between the two candidates is expected to only intensify in the days to come.



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