Mr Sadr's followers, by contrast, are shanty-town Shias who have never enjoyed any kind of power.

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He lives in a squalid two-room house in the heart of the old shanty town with his wife and small child.

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The 52-year-old daughter of a government clerk who grew up in a shanty town in the capital, Delhi, has emerged as the pivot of a fledgling "third front" in Indian politics.

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