The Samajwadi Party (SP) announced on Tuesday the names of 16 candidates to contest the Lok Sabha election, in slated to be held in April-May. The party has released the first list on its official social media platform, X (formally Twitter).
The first list includes the name of the party’s chief, Akhilesh Yadav’s wife, Dimple Yadav. She will contest from her current Mainpuri seat. SP also fielded sitting MLAs Ravidas Mehrotra and Lalji Verma from Lucknow and Ambedkar Nagar seats, respectively.
The candidates’ list includes the names of Devesh Shakya from Etah, Utkarsh Verma from Kheri, Anand Bhadauria from Dhaurahra, Anu Tandon from Unnao, Naval Kishore Shakya from Farrukhabad, Rajaram Pal from Akbarpur, Shivshankar Singh Patel from Banda, Awadhesh Prasad from Faizabad, Ramprasad Chaudhary from Basti, and Kajal Nishad from Gorakhpur.
The party has also fielded Akshay Yadav, son of senior SP leader Ramgopal Yadav, from Firozabad, while Dharmendra Yadav is from Budaun parliamentary constituency. The party has also named 93-year-old Shafiqur Rahman Barq to contest the election from the Sambhal seat, from where he currently represents SP in the Lok Sabha.
Last week, the Samajwadi Party announced the number of seats that the party is going to contest in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha election with I.N.D.I.A. ally partner Congress and RLD.
Party chief Akhilesh Yadav shared in a post on X that his party’s alliance with the Congress is “off to a good start with 11 strong seats to the Congress. This trend will move forward with the winning equation. ‘I.N.D.I.A’ team and ‘PDA strategy will change history.”
Congress seemed unhappy with this, A source in the Congress party said when the seat-sharing talks started between the two parties, the Congress had demanded 30 seats.
However, the SP was not willing to accommodate the Congress on more than 13 seats. Currently, the alliance stands at 11 seats in Congress, 7 in RLD, and 62 in the Samajwadi Party.