Lucknow: Former Bollywood actress Jaya Prada, a two-term Lok Sabha parliamentarian from Rampur in Uttar Pradesh, has gone through a range of emotions during her campaigns. There were tears and rage.
The 57-year-old actress was a member of the Samajwadi Party when she won in the 2004 and 2009 general elections. She is contesting the 2019 polls from the same seat, but as a BJP leader. Jaya Prada is currently trailing to Samajwadi Party's Azam Khan with 2,49,567 votes.
Jaya Prada, who started her film career when she was barely in her teens, has acted in nearly 300 films including blockbusters like Sharaabi (1984), Aakhree Raasta (1986) and Khakee (2004).
Her return to Uttar Pradesh's Rampur as the BJP candidate was followed by much vilification from the rival camp in a narrative worthy of any Bollywood movie.
Rampur voted on April 29, during the fourth phase of the general election. The seat is currently held by Nepal Singh of the BJP.
Born in Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh to film producer Krishna Rao, she made her debut in 1974 with Bhoomikosam and went on to establish herself as one of South India's biggest cinematic stars, with credits in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam movies, as well as in Hindi and Bengali.
She made her political debut in 1994 as a member of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Jaya Prada's time with TDP saw controversy over party chief Chandrababu Naidu making her head of the Telugu Mahila, the women's wing of the party. The appointment, many party leaders felt, overlooked other senior members.
Her first term as a parliamentarian was in 1996, when she was nominated for the Rajya Sabha. She held the seat till 2002, during which time she served on a number of parliamentary committees, including those on industry, external affairs and the welfare of scheduled castes and tribes.
Two years later she left the TDP to join the Samajwadi Party, after a reported fallout over being denied a second term in the Rajya Sabha. She took part in her first general election that year, with support from then colleague Azam Khan.
She was re-elected in 2009 but by the time, her ties with Azam Khan had soured. She was expelled from Samajwadi in 2010, officially for "anti-party activities", after finding herself on the wrong side of an internal power struggle between Azam Khan and Amar Singh.
The 2009 election was also notable for allegations Azam Khan had been circulating compromising photograph and videos of her in an attempt to derail her re-election campaign.
The actress was in relative political limbo between her expulsion from the Samajwadi Party and joining the BJP in March, only a month before the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
In that period, she and Amar Singh launched a new political party - Rashtriya Lok Manch - and endured a catastrophic Assembly election in 2012, failing to win even one of the 360 seats it contested.
That was followed by a short-lived stint with Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in 2014; she contested the Lok Sabha polls from Bijnor that year, losing to the BJP's Kunwar Bhartendra.