A day after the party announced its first candidate list for 26 out of 70 Assembly seats in Uttarakhand, the Samajwadi Party state chief Satyanarayan Sachan said on Monday that they were watching the continuing feud in the party in Uttar Pradesh, now reaching the election commission over the competing demands of the two warring factions over its symbol-a bicycle, with anxiety.
“We are indeed worried. However, the leaders and the rank and file of the party in the State are united,” he said. later, in the evening after the election commission chose to give the traditional symbol of the party to Akhilesh Yadav faction, when asked whether the SP candidates from the state would contest the election on ‘bicycle’, now lying with the Akhilesh faction, he said they were with the SP mainstream.
However, he hastened to add that in case Mulayam Singh Yadav decides to form a separate party things would be decided later.
When quizzed over the possibility of the Akhilesh faction changing the names of the candidates in view of the list being cleared by Akhilesh Yadav’s perceived sworn rival, Shivpal Yadav, his uncle, Sachan said that the national president of the party could do anything. “The situation remaining fluid, I cannot comment more at the present juncture. I am going to lucknow this evening,” he added. Notably, SP is yet to open its account in the state Assembly since the first election was held after Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in November 2000. However, this time, the party is trying its hardest to at least win one seat.
The party is focusing principally on two plain districts of Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar.
“We would field 50 candidates this time. The names of the rest of 24 candidates would be announced by January 19,” he said, adding that he had sent a list of 33 candidates to Shivpal Yadav, the party’s in-charge for the State, and Akhilesh Yadav around 20 days ago.
The party list comprises eight names for Haridwar district while three of them are women. While Premvati Devi would contest from Bhagwanpur, other part candidates include Bimla Rani from Jhabreda, Kavita Rani from Jwalapur, Mustafa from Haridwar Rural, Narendra Gujjar from laksar, Dugesh Pratap Singh from Manglaur, Sheikh Ahmed Jama from Roorkee and Mohammad Irfar from Kaliyar. As for Udham Singh Nagar, Yogendra Yadav has been fielded from Sitarganj, Sanjay Singh from Kichchha, Ansuiya Rana from Nanakmatta and Manisha from Bajpur.