BJP candidate Maneka Gandhi on Wednesday filed her nomination from Sultanpur Lok Sabha seat and declared that her second consecutive victory from the constituency would be easier than before.

"There is little challenge this time because the Opposition is not really so strong or united," she said after submitting her papers.

Before filing the nomination, she took out a road show on the Ayodhya-Allahabad highway. However, the scale and size of her rally was nothing compared to the ones Smriti Irani in adjoining Amethi or Rajnath Singh in Lucknow were part of before filing their nominations two days ago.

Prominent faces at Maneka’s road show were Sanjay Nishad, the minister of fisheries, and Ashish Patel, the minister for technical education in the Yogi Adityanath government. Nishad is the head of the Nishad Party and Patel is from Apna Dal(S), both BJP allies. There were no senior leaders from the BJP with Maneka, as they were with Irani and Singh.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav had attended women and child development minister Irani’s road show and accompanied her when she filed her nomination. Similarly, Adityanath, Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami and UP deputy CM Brajesh Pathak had accompanied defence minister Singh.

In Uttar Pradesh, there is a perception that Maneka and some of the senior BJP leaders no longer share a cordial relationship particularly after the party refused to give her son, Varun Gandhi, a ticket from Pilibhit.

Varun had won the seat in 2019 against Hemraj Verma of the Samajwadi Party by a margin of 2.55 lakh votes. Maneka had won from Sultanpur in 2019 against Chandra Bhadra Singh of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) by about 15,000 votes. She was also the Union women and child development minister for five years from 2014 but was offered no cabinet berth in 2019.

A few senior BJP leaders claimed they wanted Varun to contest from Rae Bareli, a seat his aunt and Congress MP Sonia Gandhi represented before she moved to the Rajya Sabha this year. Varun, according to party insiders, refused to contest the seat claiming he wouldn’t challenge a member of his family.

Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi are his cousins and Varun, a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi government’s policies, has reportedly told the BJP leaders he would "never break his personal commitment of maintaining a political decorum within the family".

Also in the fray from Sultanpur are Ram Bhuwal Nishad of the SP and Uday Raj Verma of the BSP.