Dimple Yadav, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s daughter-in-law, is the latest in the family to join the poll fray. She is contesting the Firozabad bypoll on the seat her husband Akhilesh Yadav vacated. The Sunday Express accompanies her on her campaign trail

AT 10.52 a.m., a bus painted in the Samajwadi Party colours of bright red and green reaches the dusty crossing in Shikohabad where a waiting convoy of Boleros and Scorpios filled with SP workers noisily lines up behind it. It is the start of Day 1 of the campaign of Dimple Yadav, daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, in the parliamentary constituency of Firozabad.

Firozabad is part of the Etawah-Mainpuri-Etah belt, home territory for Uttar Pradesh’s former chief minister or, as he is best known here, ‘Netaji’. His ancestral village of Itauli lies in this district, his home in Saifai is just about 45 km down the NH2 from Shikohabad to Agra. Yadavs form the single largest and most decisive chunk of Firozabad’s over 14 lakh-strong electorate.

The red and green bus, or ‘Parivartan Rath’, is an imitation of the ‘Kranti Rath’ said to have been gifted by Chaudhry Devi Lal to Mulayam Singh in 1987; two years later, it became part of the fiery Janata Dal campaign that signalled the end of Congress dominance in Delhi as well as in Lucknow. Mulayam Singh became chief minister of UP for the first time that year.

Emblazoned on the back of the rath is a large portrait of Netaji addressing a teeming crowd. Inside, the newest member of his family to enter politics sits dressed in demure pink, head covered, waiting for her cue to emerge from the bus, make her speech, smile and wave.

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