UP Elections 2017: Mere Angane Mein Jibe Displays Newly-Emboldened Dimple Bhabhi

Lucknow: In an election with a surfeit of memorable slogans, Dimple Yadav, 39, has managed to hold her own. "Mere angane mein, tumhara kya kaam hai?" she pronounced, with impeccable timing, as a chide to Prime Minister Narendra Modi: what business do you have in my home? Ms Yadav borrowed the line from the 80s blockbuster movie Lawaaris, starring Amitabh Bachchan.

Dressed in a maroon cotton sari and her customary small red bindi, Dimple Yadav offered the dialogue in Allahabad this week while campaigning for the SP's candidate, student leader Richa Singh. Her speech was cheered by hundreds of women who had gathered to see "Dimple Bhabhi" as she is known: sister-in-law. Her husband, Akhilesh Yadav, is bhaiyya (brother) and the Chief Minister seeking a second consecutive term.

In 2009, Dimple Yadav was defeated by the Congress' actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar when she ran for parliament. But a second attempt three years later yielded the desired result and she was elected unopposed from Kannauj, the constituency vacated by her husband when he became India's youngest Chief Minister.
 Dimple Yadav has been a largely silent MP, who has asked no questions, participated twice in debates, and racked up a low 37% attendance record. At one point in a frequently-interrupted speech she made in parliament in 2014 on crimes against women, Dimple Yadav said her father-in-law was "pleased that at least I am (finally) speaking".

But for this election, she has stepped it up considerably, joining her husband in taking direct aim at the PM, who is leading his party's campaign in India's most-populous state. A few days ago, she said the PM is prolific with his radio speeches titled Mann Ki Baat ("words from the heart"), less so with Kaam Ki Baat or listing what he can do or has done to make a difference to people's lives.

In her campaigns for her own election to parliament - she lost one, won the other - Dimple Yadav spoke haltingly in short speeches. Sources said she was pressured to run by father-in-law and family patriarch Mulayam Singh, who now has 22 relatives in the state's political practice, including his younger son's wife, Aparna Yadav.
 In the general election, Dimple Yadav's campaign for the SP was confined to her own constituency. This time, she has ventured to others like Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, addressing 15 public meetings so far.

"The demand for her presence in rallies is only rising. She is the 'woman face' of the Samajwadi Party. A lot of women and young people come to her rallies and that is a big plus for us." says Juhi Singh of the Samajwadi Party, who has attended seven of Dimple Yadav's rallies.

Sources say that in the last two years, Dimple Yadav has cast off an early indifference to politics to take a lead role in advising her husband on policies for women and children. He has promised free pressure cookers to poor women if he wins - a scheme that the party has attributed to his wife's influence and insistence.
 "Why can't the Samajwadi Party look beyond their family? If they want to highlight anyone, why does it have to be a family member? And perhaps you should also look at the Lok Sabha records of some of these high-profile people," said an unimpressed Vijay Bahadur Pathak of the BJP.

Before this campaign was launched, the Chief Minister made it clear that his wife would get top billing in the SP's promotional material. On vans and buses used by candidates and party workers, she features along with Akhilesh Yadav and his junior partner, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress.

The preface to the SP's campaign was a vicious feud between Akhilesh Yadav and his father, Mulayam Singh, who were pulling the party in different directions. It was the Chief Minister who finally emerged victorious, with the party emphatically choosing him as its top leader. During periods when Mulayam Singh refused to talk to his son, it is Dimple Yadav's two young daughters who he chose as his emissaries in a rare, amiable moment. "Your father is very stubborn," he complained to them. Sources say it is Dimple Yadav who used a lightness-of-touch in attempts to bridge the gap between the battling men in her family.

Now, she is demonstrating a more aggressive method in public - and an improving flair for the art of the one-liner.