Old memories die hard. An interesting episode of the nineties when Kaka was defeated by Advani.

It was probably, the first week of July 1991. After the declaration of the historic election results of the New Delhi parliamentary constituency, the super star cum Congress candidate Rajesh Khanna was bit demoralised about his political career ahead which he had just started fighting from New Delhi against the BJP stalwart and a towering leader Lal Krishna Advani at the insistence of the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who was also Kaka’s fan and the super star was his.

Kaka had lost this election to Lal Krishna Advani by just a small margin of 1500 votes and had cried foul. I was then his media advisor and was looking after his press n political cordination. I advised Rajesh Khanna, not to lose heart but to file a petition in the court for recounting as it was alleged that then the counting being mannual, some irregularities had been committed in the process.

Now, the strategy was to psychologically demoralise the BJP and its winning candidate L. K. Advani so as to pressurise him to either go for the recounting or prefer his Gandhi Nagar seat leaving the New Delhi for re election.

Since it was a high profile election, the media was also active, highlighting the demand of the super star for recounting/ re election to the best. The victory news of Advani was dominated by the news of Kaka for recounting and his accusations about alleged DHANDHLI/ malpractices in counting.

Finally it was decided that the Congress party will go to the court against Advani’s victory on the ground of irregularities and the newspapers were full of banner news, compelling the BJP stalwart Advani to opt for the Gandhi Nagar seat which he had won alongwith the New Delhi, but with a heavy margin.

It was quite obvious that a sensible leader like Advani would have never committed a blunder to retain New Delhi than Gandhi Nagar as the former (seat) was full of controversies and court hearing mess etc which could have kept his victory in jeopardy n abeyance.

The trick of Kaka as advised by us worked and the New Delhi seat fell vacant after his opponent Advani retained Gandhi Nagar, resigning from New Delhi.

Kaka was indeed a happy man as he acknowleged lot of sympathies from the New Delhi electorates. Kaka won the next time with a heavy margin defeating Shatrughan Sinha, the BJP candidate as the election took the shape of a contest between a super star legend Rajesh Khanna and a bollywood villain Shatrughan Sinha. It was a Hero verses Villain contest and the Hero was finally triumphant.

In the picture are Rajesh Khanna, Margret Alva and Dr. Pranav Mukerjee addressing a press conference at AICC headquarter announcing the idea of going to the court against the alleged malpractices committed in the election demading a repoll. Me standing just behind Rajesh Khanna.