Lucknow: Mainpuri MP and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav Tuesday evening won her party’s pocket borough of Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh (UP) by 2,21,639 votes.
Dimple secured 5,98,526 votes and her nearest rival UP minister Jayveer Singh 3,76,887 votes only, according to the Election Commission of India website.
Dimple was defending her family bastion against BJP’s Jayveer Singh, for whom UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also campaigned. Even Bahujan Samaj Party Chief Mayawati fielded a candidate in Mainpuri this election and addressed a rally in his favour. With 66,814 votes, BSP’s Shiv Prasad Yadav lost by 5,31,712 votes.
Saifai village — the native village of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family — is in Mainpuri’s Jaswantnagar assembly constituency.
Three of the five assembly constituencies in Mainpuri, including Kishni, Jaswant Nagar and Karhal, voted the SP to power in the 2022 state assembly polls, while the BJP won Mainpuri and Bhongaon.
Mainpuri holds political and symbolic significance for the SP, which has been winning the constituency since 1996. It is also the constituency from where SP founder and former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav won five times. While Mulayam won Mainpuri for the first time in 1996, SP’s Balram Yadav won the seat twice between 1998 and 1999. Mulayam then won the seat four times between 2004 and 2019.
After Mulayam’s demise in October 2022 affected a bypoll, Dimple fought from the seat and won it by defeating BJP’s Raghuraj Singh Shakya by a margin of 2,88,461 votes.
The 2022 win also brought the feuding family members of the SP’s first family together as Mulayam’s younger brother Shivpal Yadav returned to the SP fold and Akhilesh welcomed him in the party by handing over the ‘cycle’ symbol of the SP on 8 December when the results were announced.
According to political experts, the 2024 win establishes the influence of the first Yadav family in Mainpuri and other SP strongholds such as Kannauj, Firozabad, Budaun and Azamgarh.
Speaking to ThePrint, Mirza Asmer Beg, a political science professor at Aligarh Muslim University, said that Dimple’s lead shows that the first family of SP has been able to retain its strongholds and that the public of Mainpuri has sided with the Yadav family after Mulayam’s demise.
“Akhilesh and his wife Dimple have managed to retain their strongholds despite facing massive competition from the BJP. This only shows that they have been able to carry forward the family legacy in their strongholds such as Mainpuri. Even if Akhilesh vacates Kannauj for a bigger role in national politics, he would like to keep the seat within the family,” he said.
T.P. Singh, a political science professor at the Banaras Hindu University, said that Dimple’s win is significant because she contested this election mostly on her own while campaigning for other party candidates.
“With SP leading on 35 seats, less than half of the seats in UP, Akhilesh is set for a national role. If he decides to take the national plunge, his wife and other family members may be up for a bigger role in UP politics,” he said.
(Edited by Madhurita Gowami)
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