Lok Sabha election: Samajwadi Party releases its first list of candidates, Mulayam Singh Yadav to contest from Mainpuri 

Mulayam Singh Yadav.

New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party announced its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha election, on Friday. It has named six candidates in its first list, which includes the party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and party leader Akhilesh Yadav’s cousins Dharmendra Yadav and Akshay Yadav.

Mulayam Singh Yadav will go back to contest from Mainpuri.  – considered to be his pocket borough. He won the Lok Sabha seat in 1996, 2004 and 2009. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, he contested from two seats – Azamgarh and Mainpuri – during the Narendra Modi wave. He won both, but relinquished the Mainpuri seat, which his elder brother’s son, Tej Pratap Singh Yadav, later won.   

Dharmendra Yadav and Akshay Yadav will contest again from Badaun and Firozabad respectively. Dharmendra Yadav, who is Ram Gopal Yadav’s son, won the seat three times. Akshay Yadav will contest from Firozabad, from where he represents now.

The three others in the SP first list are: Kamlesh Katheria, who will contest from Etawah; Bhailal Kol, who will contest from Robertsganj; and Shabbir Ahmad Balmiki, who will contest from Bahraich. All these three seats are reserved seats.

Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and its ally, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, had already divided the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha seats among themselves. The SP will contest 37 seats and the BSP 38. The state has 80 Lok Sabha seats.

Related