 "Ajay Aggarwal")
"Sacrificial lamb", "scapegoat", "fall guy" and "publicity hungry" are some of the adjectives used in the media to describe 49-year-old Ajay Aggarwal's decision to contest against Congress president Sonia Gandhi from the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency.
But the Supreme Court advocate, better known for his penchant for filing public interest litigations, is unfazed. "I am fighting this election to win. It will be a comfortable victory," says he, without batting an eyelid or showing any trace of a sheepish smile.
Nobody, not even his closest friends in the legal fraternity or leaders of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who have fielded him from the seat, give Aggarwal much of a chance against Gandhi. But Aggarwal is confident that the people of Rae Bareli would vote for Modi, as they are fed up with corruption.
Rae Bareli has been a Nehru-Gandhi pocket borough. Sonia's father-in-law Feroze Gandhi represented the seat in 1952 and 1957. Indira Gandhi won from the seat in the 1967, 1971 and 1980 elections. It has returned Nehru-Gandhi family members such as Arun Nehru and Sheila Kaul or family confidante Satish Sharma in later years. Sonia fought and won from the seat in 2004 and 2009. Rae Bareli has defeated a Congress candidate, but only thrice in 15 Lok Sabha and two by-elections since 1952. One of those occasions was Indira Gandhi's famous loss to Janata Party's Raj Narain in the post-Emergency election of 1977. "This election would make similar history," shouts Aggarwal over the ruckus of his road show in the constituency on Thursday, his first day in the constituency after the BJP announced his candidature on Monday.
BJP treasurer Piyush Goyal vouches for Aggarwal's long association with the BJP.
"I remember him from our days together manning the BJP control room at 11, Ashoka Road during the 1991 Lok Sabha elections," says Goyal, but is a bit surprised when told that Aggarwal joined the Samajwadi Party (SP) some years ago.
Aggarwal adeptly defends his temporary divorce from the BJP. "I am no party hopper. The need of the hour was to defeat the corrupt Mayawati government in UP and SP was the only party that could have accomplished that," says Aggarwal, who had filed a
PIL against Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati in the Taj Corridor case.
Aggarwal had also filed and argued PILs in the Bofors corruption scandal and the fake stamp paper scam involving Abdul Karim Telgi.
Sources in the BJP say Aggarwal quit the party in early 2012 as he thought the party had little chance of doing well in UP in the Assembly elections. He returned to the BJP in October 2013, possibly as he didn't get the kind of recognition he had hoped from the Akhilesh Yadav government. Aggarwal claims he quit the SP as he soon got disillusioned with Akhilesh's poor governance and handling of the Muzaffarnagar riots.
Aggarwal says he is no opportunist and that his family has been with the RSS and Jan Sangh for over half-a-century. His father Chandra Prakash Aggarwal, who taught law at the Lucknow University, was an RSS activist. Aggarwal says former President of India Shankar Dayal Sharma and his father were close friends, despite their different political affiliations. Sharma, a couple of years younger to the senior Aggarwal, also taught law at the university. "My father would tell me how Sharma ji would make tea for him," says Aggarwal, who hails from Shahjahanpur.
The advocate claims with considerable satisfaction that he was a graduate by the age of 17 and passed his law exam in 1985. "I was only 20 then," says Aggarwal, who completed his studies from Chandausi and moved to Delhi soon after to practice law. Apart from filing PILs, Aggarwal has also been the standing counsel for the state of Uttar Pradesh. His two sisters are also Supreme Court lawyers.
Aggarwal denies he has parachuted in Rae Bareli and his contesting the election was a publicity stunt. He claims to have been working in the constituency for the past six months. "The party had taken feedback from local workers, which was positive," he says.
Aggarwal's friends in the apex court describe the man as hardworking and ambitious. "He is undoubtedly a crusader. But he is also aware that he has a common enough name. There are half-a-dozen Ajay Aggarwals in the court but he has carved out a space for himself by fighting cases like Bofors and Taj Corridor scam," says a lawyer colleague of Aggarwal's. A contest against Sonia Gandhi has already added to Aggarwal's glory in the courts.
