Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party on Tuesday declared its first list of candidates, including three members of the Yadav family and eight other OBCs, for 16 Lok Sabha seats.
While former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s wife and Mainpuri MP Dimple Yadav will contest from the constituency again, his cousins Dharmendra and Akshay Yadav have been fielded from Badaun and Firozabad, respectively.
Both Dharmendra and Akshay have represented the constituencies in the past. While Dharmendra has been a two-time MP from Badaun (2009-2019), Akshay served as the Firozabad parliamentarian from 2014 to 2019.
That the SP has gone ahead with releasing its first list even as the Congress has maintained that seat-sharing talks with the principal opposition party in Uttar Pradesh are on, is significant.
On Sunday, Akhilesh had tweeted that the party is beginning its alliance with the Congress as part of which, the latter is getting 11 seats. However, UP Congress chief Ajay Rai had remarked that seat-sharing talks are still on between the national leadership of the two parties.
Apart from the OBC candidates, the list features one from SC, three from upper caste and a Muslim, in line with the party chief’s PDA pitch for the ‘Picchde’ (backwards), Dalit (scheduled castes) and ‘Alpasankhayak’ (minorities).
— Samajwadi Party (@samajwadiparty) January 30, 2024
Katehri MLA and senior leader Lalji Verma, who served as a minister in the Mayawati government before switching to the SP in 2021, was given a ticket from Ambedkarnagar.
While Devesh Shakya has got the ticket from Etah, Utkarsh Verma — who unsuccessfully contested from Lakhimpur in the 2022 state polls — was selected for Kheri.
SP state general secretary Naval Kishore Shakya, a former BSP leader who joined the party in 2018, will contest from Farrukhabad.
Two-time MP Rajaram Pal, who was with the BSP and the Congress before joining the SP in 2021, will try his luck from Akbarpur. An OBC leader, Pal served as a BSP MP from Bilhaur in 2004 and the Akbarpur MP for the Congress in 2009.
Shivshankar Singh Patel, a former BJP leader who was expelled by the party for six years in 2021, is candidate for Banda. Patel has served as the BJP’s MLA from Baberu assembly constituency.
Senior leader Ram Prasad Chaudhary, who served as a minister in the Mayawati and Kalyan Singh governments and also served as a five-time MLA from Kaptanganj, will again contest from Basti, a seat where he lost to BJP’s Harish Dwivedi in 2019.
The SP chief’s choice of candidate for Gorakhpur — the backyard of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath — is Kajal Nishad. She was the SP’s mayor candidate from Gorakhpur in 2023. A major controversy had followed after she alleged electoral fraud stating that while 3,63,000 votes were polled, the total votes counted were 4,87,198.
Milkipur MLA Awadhesh Prasad, who is associated with SP’s late patron Mulayam Singh Yadav since 1977, is contesting from Faizabad. He belongs to the SC category.
Lucknow central MLA Ravidas Mehrotra will fight from Lucknow, while former Unnao MP Annu Tandon now has a chance to represent the parliamentary constituency again. She had left the Congress to join the SP in 2020.
Dhaurahra will again host former MLC Anand Bhadauria, who had lost to BJP’s Rekha Verma in 2014.
Shafiqur Rahman Barq, 93, will contest from Sambhal. Known to make statements against the party line, Barq faced sedition charges in 2021 for defending the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and equating it with India’s freedom struggle.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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