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SP to field Sanjay Dutt from Lucknow

Gargi Parsai

Photo: PTI

SURPRISE CHOICE: Actor Sanjay Dutt addresses journalists after his nomination as candidate for the Lok Sabha election by the Samajwadi Party, in Srinagar on Thursday. —

NEW DELHI: In a surprise move, the Samajwadi Party on Thursday announced that Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt would be its candidate from Lucknow for the Lok Sabha elections “subject to clearance by the Supreme Court and the Election Commission.” Mr. Dutt, who had been sentenced by the High Court under the Arms Act, would be the party’s star campaigner in the elections.

Party president Mulayam Singh will contest from Mainpuri and his son, Akhilesh Yadav, will be fielded from Kannauj as well as from Ferozabad. Akhilesh Yadav represents Kannouj in Parliament.

Actor Manoj Tiwari described as “the Amitabh Bachchan of Bhojpuri films” will be fielded from Gorakhpur.

The SP will repeat Bollywood actor and sitting MP Jaya Prada from Rampur. The Congress had wanted to field Noor Banu as part of the pre-poll seat arrangement with the SP.

Announcing the party’s first list of 29 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections after a meeting of the Central Parliamentary Board here on Thursday, party general secretary Amar Singh said, “Like a BJP MP, who is a known cricketer, was allowed to contest despite being convicted, we too will try our best to field Sanjay Dutt. If we fail, he will certainly be our star campaigner.”

Claiming that Mr. Dutt had agreed to contest, Mr. Singh said that recently the United Nations made him their global ambassador on malnutrition. “Since we are an ally of the Congress and Sanjay’s sister Priya is a Congress MP, we hope the party would be happy.”

The sitting MPs who have been fielded again are Dharmendra Yadav (Badayun), Ram Vilas Suman (Agra), Mohan Singh (Deoria), Rasheed Masood (Saharanpur), Neeraj Shekhar (Balia), Rewti Raman Singh (Allahabad) and Ravi Verma (Lakhimpur Kheri).

The seats of some of the candidates have been altered due to delimitation of constituencies.

Other names that have been cleared include Premdas Kanderia (Etawah), Kamlesh Pathak (Bilhaur), Sadan Masud (Kairana), Kartar Singh Bhadana (Bijnaur), Ashok Chandel (Hamirpur), R.K. Patel (Banda), Ghanshyam Gauri (Jalaun –SC), Rakesh Sachaan (Fatehpur), Mithilesh Kumar(Shahjehanpur), Deepak Kumar (Unnao), Shyama Charan Gupta (Phulpur), Bal Kumar Patel (Mirzapur), Ram Sagar Rawat (Barabanki), Ranjana Vajpayee (Sitapur), Iqbal Mahmood (Sambhal) and Dharmendra Kashyap (Aonla).

Referring to the “poaching” of SP MLAs in Madhya Pradesh by the Congress and their acceptance of suspended MPs Raj Babbar and Beni Prasad Verma, he criticised the Congress for wooing party leader S. Bangarappa in Karnataka. “So far we have adhered to coalition dharma, but from now on we will be free to take Congressmen into our fold.”

Seat-sharing talks

Saying that the party had not closed its options with the Congress in the seat-sharing talks in U.P. for Lok Sabha polls, he said: “We have stretched and the coalition may break, can break, will break…”

However, but for Rampur, the party has not declared any candidates for the seats on which it is talking with the Congress.

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