Dimple Yadav
Credit: PTI
Lucknow: Taking a lead over his rivals, the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Tuesday declared its first list of 16 candidates in Uttar Pradesh for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, which are barely a few months away.
The first list of the party, which would be contesting the LS polls in alliance with other I.N.D.I.A bloc members, including Congress, contained the names of party president Akhilesh Yadav's wife and sitting MP Dimple Yadav, who would be contesting from the party's stronghold—Mainpuri.
The SP has decided to field Kajal Nishad from UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath's home town of Gorakhpur. The choice of Kajal Nishad was significant keeping in view a large number of voters from the 'Nishad' (boatmen) community in the constituency.
Dharmendra Yadav has been fielded from Badaun LS seat while SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav's son Akshoy Yadav will be contesting from Firozabad LS constituency.
Anu Tandon will be the SP nominee from Unnao while Ravidas Mehrotra and Raharam Pal are the party's candidates from Lucknow (which is currently represented by Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh) and Akbarpur LS constituencies, respectively.
Sitting MP Shafik-ur-Rehman Burq has been fielded from Sambhal while Naval Kishore Shakya and Shiv Shankar Singh Patel have been fielded from Farrukhabad and Banda LS seats, respectively. The party has fielded Awadhesh Prasad from Faizabad, Lalji Verma from Ambedkar Nagar and Ram Prasad Choudhary from Basti.
The list reveals that the SP has sought to take care of the caste equations and has chosen its nominees keeping in mind the number of voters in the constituencies.
Interestingly, the SP has declared its first list amid claims by the Congress that the seat-sharing talks between the two parties were on and that the grand old party would get more than the 11 seats offered by Akhilesh a few days back.