The Samajwadi Party (SP) announced its first list of 16 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha election. The Congress has made a claim for at least two of these 16 seats — Farrukhabad and Faizabad.
According to sources, senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid, who is a part of the Congress’ National Alliance Committee, wanted to contest from Farrukhabad, from where he has won twice — in 1991 and 2009. But, “How could they lay a claim on the seat, considering that in the 2022 Assembly election, in all five Assembly segments that make up the Lok Sabha seat, the Congress had polled around 8,000 votes,” a senior Samajwadi Party leader said.
The Congress wanted the Faizabad seat too, which its former State president Nirmal Khatri has won twice in the past. But SP leaders ruled that the Congress was not in a winnable position there.
The first list includes three members of the Yadav family — Dimple Yadav from Mainpuri, which she currently represents; Akshay Yadav, son of senior SP leader Ramgopal Yadav, from Firozabad; and Dharmendra Yadav from the Badaun parliamentary constituency. Both Mr. Akshay Yadav and Mr. Dharmendra Yadav have held the Firozabad and Badaun seats in the past, but lost in the 2019 election.
In the Kheri Lok Sabha seat, where the SP’s two-time Lok Sabha MP Ravi Verma switched to the Congress, the party has fielded Utkarsh Verma, a first-timer. This seat is currently held by the BJP’s controversial leader and Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni.
The party is also repeating its Sambhal MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq from Sambhal.
Annu Tandon, former Congress leader who switched to SP, has been fielded from Unnao. She had won the seat in 2009 on a Congress ticket. The SP has been a distant second in the seat in the last two elections, losing to the BJP’s Sakshi Maharaj.
Ravidas Mehrotra, sitting MLA from Lucknow Central, has been named the party’s candidate from the Lucknow Lok Sabha seat.
Similarly, the sitting SP MLA from Katehari in Ambedkarnagar district, Lalji Verma, has been named the party’s candidate from the Ambedkarnagar parliamentary constituency.
