Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will contest the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election from Karhal in the Yadav family bastion of Mainpuri.
Party patron Mulayam Singh is the Lok Sabha member from Mainpuri.
SP national general secretary Ramgopal Yadav, who is also Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle, made the formal announcement on Saturday.
While he has been a Member of Parliament from Kannauj and Azamgarh, and also elected to the State Legislative Council, this would be Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s first Assembly election. He won the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Azamgarh in Purvanchal.
Party stronghold
Senior party leader Sobaran Singh Yadav won the last three elections from the Karhal seat. In 2002, he contested as a BJP candidate and defeated the SP by a narrow margin. From 1986 to 2002, Ram Babu Yadav held the seat on symbols of various socialist parties — the Lok Dal, the Janata Dal, the Janata Party (Secular) and the SP.
The Karhal seat was one of the 47 the SP won in 2017 when the BJP overthrew it to come to power in the State along with its two allies, securing 325 out of the 403 seats in the Assembly. In 2017, the SP got 1.04 lakh votes in the seat, while the BJP stood second with around 35,000.
“He [Akhilesh] will reach the Vidhan Sabha with record votes,” Mr. Ramgopal Yadav said.
Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s choice of a seat in Mainpuri brings central Uttar Pradesh and the Yadav strongholds into focus. In eastern Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Akhilesh Yadav has already crafted a formidable caste alliance, while in western Uttar Pradesh, the SP-RLD alliance is banking on the farmer protests to pay dividends. With Shivpal Yadav, Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle, also coming on board, the SP hopes to consolidate its core voters in the central region.
The BJP has already fielded Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath from his political bastion Gorakhpur , while his deputy, Keshav Prasad Maurya, is contesting from Sirathu in his home district of Kaushambi, from where he was first elected as an MLA in 2012.
Congress candidate joins SP
Meanwhile, former Congress MP from Bareilly Praveen Singh Aron and wife Supriya Aron, former Mayor of the city, joined the SP.
Ms. Aron, who was the Congress candidate from the Bareilly Cantonment seat, will now contest on an SP ticket.
