How Rajesh Khanna almost ended Advani’s career in 1991

New Delhi, 19 Jul 2012: As a superstar of the 60’s and early 70’s, Rajesh Khanna was never quite known to be a dishum-dishum hero, but he almost ended BJP veteran L K Advani’s political career by giving the saffron stalwart a scare of his life for the New Delhi seat in the 1991 Lok Sabha election.

 

Advani managed to hang by a paltry 1,589 votes as a shocked Khanna refused to accept the narrow defeat, rolling on the ground at the counting station insisting that he had been cheated of a win. He did win the seat eventually in a byelection when Advani vacated the constituency.

 

If the result had gone the other way, the setback for Advani would have been immense as the win in 1991 led to his becoming leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha. It was only the second Lok Sabha election he fought having beaten Congress’s Mohini Giri in the previous 1989 contest.

 

Advani had taken the precaution of also contesting from Gandhinagar, but a defeat would have been a blow for his espousal of the Ram Temple movement that led to the collapse of the V P Singh government, which in turn resulted in the 1991 election.

 

In 1991, the election may well have been settled decisively in Kaka’s favour but for the presence of Janata Dal candidate Manju Mohan, who polled a little over 20,000 votes. Wife of veteran socialist Surendra Mohan, her presence created a severe dilemma for socialist and minority leaders, many of whom could not turn down Mohan’s requests to campaign for his spouse.

 

The division in votes led to Advani sneaking past the post in a constituency, where his colleague Atal Bihari Vajpayee had been given a similar scare in 1980 by rank outsider C M Stephen. Even so, Khanna did well in Congress vote banks but Advani managed to grab a lead with the support he received in areas like Lajpat Nagar, Sewa Nagar and Amar Colony.