In the initial election results on Tuesday, Akhilesh Yadav, the leader of the Samajwadi Party, along with his wife Dimple Yadav, held leads in the Kannauj and Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituencies respectively in Uttar Pradesh. Akhilesh’s main contender for the Kannauj seat, BJP’s Subrat Pathak, trailed by more than 13,000 votes after two hours of counting. Meanwhile, Dimple Yadav maintained a lead of over 29,000 votes with Jayveer Singh of the BJP as her closest competitor.
Akhilesh Yadav, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has a longstanding connection with the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat. He first won it in 2000 and subsequently represented it in 2004 and 2009. This marks his fourth attempt to secure the seat in his family’s political stronghold.
The Yadav family’s link with Kannauj began in 1999 when Akhilesh’s father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, won the seat. Since then, it has been held either by Akhilesh himself or his wife, Dimple Yadav, until 2019.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the seat was won by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Subrat Pathak, who narrowly defeated Dimple Yadav with a margin of 1.08%.
Pathak garnered a vote share of 49.37%, while Dimple secured 48.29%. In the same year, Akhilesh Yadav was elected from Azamgarh but later resigned after winning the Uttar Pradesh Assembly seat from the Karhal constituency in 2022.
The 50-year-old politician had previously defeated BJP candidate and actress Jaya Prada Nahata in the Lok Sabha elections, securing a substantial vote share of 60.4% compared to his opponent’s 35.15%.
