The Samajwadi Party on Tuesday announced 5 more candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh. The party has nominated SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav from the Badaun Lok Sabha seat and Surendra Singh Patel from the Varanasi seat.
The latest announcement brings the total number of SP candidates to 32 in the three lists released so far. The first list of 16 candidates was released on January 30 while 11 candidates, including Afzal Ansari, mafia don Mukhtar Ansari’s elder brother, were named on Monday. The party has nominated Afzal Ansari from the Ghazipur Lok Sabha seat.
In the new list, the SP has fielded Surendra Singh Patel from Varanasi to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On the other hand, Shivpal Singh Yadav has replaced Dharmendra Yadav in Badaun, which is currently represented by Swami Prasad Maurya’s daughter, Sanghamitra, a BJP MP.
Candidates named in the latest list released on Tuesday include Iqra Gasan from Kairana, Shivpal Singh Yadav from Badaun, Praveen Singh Aron from Bareilly, Ajendra Singh Rajput from Hamirpur and Surendra Singh Patel from Varanasi.
The party has appointed Mehboob Ali and Ram Avtar Saini as co in-charges of the Amroha seat while Dharmendra Yadav has been appointed as the incharge of the Kannauj and Azamgarh seats. The party has designated Manoj Choudhury as the incharge of the Baghpat seat.
The decision to appoint Dharmendra Yadav as the incharge of the Kannauj and Azamgarh seats indicates that Akhilesh Yadav might contest from both these seats.
Meanwhile, amid reports of a potential rift in the pre-poll alliance between the SP and the Congress, it is learnt that talks are still underway. Media reports earlier claimed that the SP had allocated 17 seats to the Congress against their demand for at least four more seats.