Trouble is said to be brewing in the Samajwadi Party over the selection of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Besides SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle Shivpal Yadav, several leaders are sulking over the candidates selected by the party.
Shiva Yadav is unhappy over the denial of ticket to his son Aditya Yadav. Shiva wanted the ticket for his son from Firozabad.
Akshaya Yadav, son of SP principal general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, was elected from this seat in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. He is likely to be fielded from this seat yet again.
Though Jaswantnagar (Etawah) MLA Shivpal Yadav has been fielded by the party from the Budaun Lok Sabha seat, he is said to have been assured that his son will be given the ticket from Jaswantnagar assembly seat if he (Shivpal) is elected to Lok Sabha. Shivpal will have to resign from the assembly seat.
Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to give party nominations to three “outsiders” in the fifth and latest list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections has not gone down well with the party’s rank and file. Many aspiring Samajwadi Party leaders from western UP’s Nagina, Meerut and Bhadohi seats are said to be disappointed.
The party nominees declared in the third round of candidate selection, especially in a few western UP seats, have fuelled discontent. The party preferred Supreme Court advocate Bhanu Pratap Singh from Meerut and retired additional district judge (Bijnor) Manoj Kumar from Nagina in Bijnor district while sparing the Bhadohi seat for the Trinamool Congress, an INDIA ally.
Party insiders say sitting MLA Atul Pradhan of Sardhana in Meerut district was a ticket aspirant from Meerut. He was ready to field his wife if the party did not select him. The BJP has been winning from Meerut since 2014, and Rajendra Agarwal has been the MP twice. The BSP was the runner-up in 2014 and 2019.
After the list was announced, Pradhan wrote on X: “The people of Meerut prayed for me. I apologise to you for not getting a chance.”
Even the candidature of Manoj Kumar, the party’s choice for Nagina Lok Sabha constituency, has caused some resentment. Manoj Kumar joined the SP only recently.
It was speculated that the SP would leave the Nagina constituency, a reserved seat, for Azad Samaj Party chief Chandra Shekhar Azad ‘Ravan.’
Current SP MLA Manoj Kumar Paras was also seeking a ticket from the seat for his wife Neelam. Girish Chandra was the joint SP-BSP candidate for Nagina in 2019.