LUCKNOW/ NEW DELHI  : Poonam Sinha, the wife of Shatrughan Sinha, joined the Samajwadi Party in the presence of party leader Dimple Yadav on Tuesday. She will be fielded against Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow. She will file her nomination from the Lucknow constituency on April 18.
Poonam Sinha was welcomed into the party by Dimple Yadav, the wife of Samajwadi chief Akhilesh Yadav, with just two more days before nominations close for Lucknow. “She will be our nominee for Lucknow,” said senior Samajwadi leader Ravidas Mehrotra.
Poonam Sinha, 69, is a former model and actor debuting in politics, unlike her husband, a two-time union minister. Party leaders say as a Sindhi married to a Kayastha – the community has a considerable presence in the urban parts of Lucknow – she could make an impact but she will have to battle the tag of an “outsider”.

The decision to field Poonam Sinha as the joint opposition candidate against Rajnath Singh is seen as an attempt by the opposition parties to keep the Union Home Minister confined to his constituency. Poonam Sinha is a Sindhi while her husband Shatrughan Sinha is a Kayastha.Earlier, a leader of the SP said, “There are four lakh Kayastha voters and 1.3 lakh Sindhi voters in Lucknow, apart from 3.5 lakh Muslims. This will give a major push to her candidature.”
Rajnath Singh had won the Lucknow seat in 2014 garnering 55.7 per cent of the total 10,06,483 votes polled. He had won in all the five assembly segments of the constituency. On April 6, Shatrughan Sinha joined the Congress. He was earlier with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He will contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Bihar’s Patna Sahib on a Congress ticket.
Ravidas Mehrotra from SP said, “Poonam Sinha ji will be the SP-BSP-RLD candidate from Lucknow. She will file nomination on April 18. We appeal to the Congress that do not field your candidate from here so that BJP can be defeated.”Congress is unlikely to field a candidate against Poonam Sinha.
Lucknow is a prestigious seat that has been with the BJP since 1991. The party’s iconic leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee held it from 1991 to 2009. Since then, Rajnath Singh has been winning the seat. In this election, the seat has fallen into the Samajwadi Party’s share of seats as part of its alliance with bitter rival turned partner BSP.

In 2014, he was up against Rita Bahuguna Joshi, then with the Congress and a UP minister. Ms Joshi, who has since joined the BJP, managed about 2,80,000 votes to Rajnath Singh’s 5,60,000. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was third and the Samajwadi Party of Akhilesh Yadav was fourth.