Ready for UP poll battle: Not the Maya you know

LUCKNOW: They call her `Behenji' in her village. She's a Jatav. And has serious political ambitions. That's Mayawati. Just that she's the other Mayawati. Not the BSP supremo. The Kumari Mayawati of this story is the RLD's candidate from Koraon reserved constituency in Allahabad.

Having tried her luck in panchayat elections last year, the 27-year-old MBA student from Allahabad University is ready to file her nomination.She takes on heavyweights in her seat, represented by BSP's Raj Bali Jaisal. “Naam hi kaafi hai...'' she laughs.Mayawati, born in a family of farmers, is the youngest of four siblings.

The BSP chief 's namesake isn't financially as well-off as others in the fray. “My resources are limited... I've urged my party to at least provide me with a vehicle to campaign,“ she says. Mayawati says her father Mahadev wanted her to get a professional degree so he could marry her into a `decent' family.

“That's why I got enrolled for an MBA. But then I also wanted to be in politics,“ she explains. Asked why she didn't choose any other major party , Mayawati says her reach was limited. “I was asked by RLD offce-bearers to file my nomination,“ she claims.

This isn't the first time that a namesake of the BSP chief has joined the poll fray in UP. In 2002, when the BSP boss contested assembly elections from two seats -Jahangirganj and Harora and won both -she fielded her namesake from Srinagar in Lakhimpur.The namesake too won.

While the BSP chief stopped contesting assembly polls, the other Mayawati contested from Srinagar again in 2007 but lost to SP's R A Usmani. When the BSP denied her a ticket in 2012, she fought on a Congress ticket from the same seat but came in fourth, getting barely 6% of the votes.