Akhilesh-Rahul's show runs into Amit Shah's Allahabad bugle

New Delhi: It seemed as if all the political stars had descended on Allahabad to woo voters on the last day of campaigning before the fourth phase of polling on February 23. While BJP President Amit Shah blew a conch shell and promised to “liberate” people from  candidates with criminal cases like Mukhtar Ansari, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav held joint road shows.

Mr Gandhi said in Rae Bareli that the aim of the Congress-SP alliance is to win 250 seats and “send PM Narendra Modi packing to Gujarat in 2019”.

Allahabad has 12 Assembly constituencies, the largest number for any district in the state.

The BJP president began the day with a rally in Soraon — a predominantly rural Assembly segment in the district’s trans-Ganga region, followed by a brief public meeting in Mundera Mandi in support of party national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh, who has been fielded from Allahabad (West).

Mr Shah was accompanied by the party’s state unit chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, whose Phulpur parliamentary constituency covers a major part of the city. Mr Shah addressed a public meeting in support of Mr Singh before embarking on a road show criss-crossing major parts of the city.

“Siddharth is my dear friend who has been doing a great job in Delhi. We asked him to fight elections from Allahabad as this is the land of his maternal grandfather Lal Bahadur Shastri and the ongoing Assembly polls are going to be historic and path-breaking,” he said.

Mr Singh’s candidature had surprised many local BJP leaders and the Delhi-based leader has been working hard to cast aside the “outsider” tag.

Despite allegations of polarising the electorate, Mr Shah said that the BJP will shut down all the mechanical slaughter houses across the state “so that UP is known not for shedding the blood of hapless animals but as a land where streams of milk and butter flow”.

Opposition parties have charged that the BJP was trying to raise the communal pitch after Mr Modi, at a Fatehpur rally on Sunday, said each village needs to have a graveyard and a cremation ground and that people should get power on Diwali as well as Eid, without discrimination. They say that the issue of mechanical slaughter houses is being raised for similar reasons.

Crowds also thronged the road show by young duo Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav. Mr Gandhi, who had stayed overnight at Allahbad’s Swaraj Bhawan — the birth place of former Prime minister and his grandmother, Indira Gandhi — was joined in the afternoon by the UP chief minister for the road show, which commenced at the Balson Chauraha, facing the historic Anand Bhavan.

Standing atop a Mercedes bus, the leaders were greeted by a large number of young supporters who raised slogans like “UP ko ye saath pasand hai” (UP likes this alliance) and “Kaam bolta hai” (Work speaks for itself).

Both the leaders also addressed students at the Allahabad University (AU) campus where they said they will form the next government in the state and claimed that the momentum gained by their alliance had made the Prime Minister jittery.

The two candidates fielded by the Congress-SP combine in the city are two-time MLA Anugrah Narayan Singh from Allahabad (North) and debutant Richa Singh from Allahabad (West). Both are former presidents of the AU students’ union.

Addressing a rally in Gonda, BSP supremo Mayawati said demonetisation as a “diversionary tactic”, a “unilateral” move that was implemented without the adequate preparations or groundwork.

“The impact of demonetisation was so intense that people are yet to recover from its shock. The government is clueless as to how much black money it got and against how many persons penal action was initiated,” she said.