Samajwadi Secular Morcha, the Shivpal Singh Yadav-led breakaway faction of Samajwadi Party, on Sunday appointed presidents of 30 more district and city units.
The move will add to the problems of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav in the 2019 Lok Sabha election as all the office-bearers announced by the SSM are former leaders of the Samajwadi Party.
The SSM is also focusing on the traditional social base of the SP comprising Yadavs and Muslims. Most of the office-bearers announced by the SSM are from these two communities.
Talking to reporters here while releasing the list of the district/city presidents, Shivpal said that in the coming days, the party would complete the appointment of district presidents of all 75 districts.
He said the SSM was fully geared up to take the plunge in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
“We will contest all the 80 seats except Mainpuri from where SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav will be the candidate,” he said while setting a challenge for the SP led by his nephew Akhilesh Yadav.
Shivpal has already applied to the Election Commission for registration of his political party. The poll panel is likely to approve the new party soon.
Most of the new district presidents appointed by the SSM are senior and influential leaders of the SP who sided with Shivpal during the dispute between the uncle and the nephew.
The new district presidents of the SSM are Yashpal Rana (Agra), Ashok Raina (Agra city), Mahendra Pal Singh Baghel (Aligarh), Ram Kishore Yadav (Etah), Azim Bhai (Ferozabad), Boat Singh (Mainpuri), Jagdish Nohwar (Mathura), Waris Ali (Farrukhabad city), Sunil Yadav (Etawah), Imtiaz Khan (Banda), Prabha Nand Yadav (Jaunpur), Shyam Narain Yadav (Mirzapur), Ram Shanker Yadav (Sonebhadra), Ram Pyare (Azamgarh), Dinesh Yadav (Ballia), Vijay Shanker (Mau), Ram Milan Yadav (Gorakhpur), Girendra Yadav (Deoria), Jitendra Yadav (Farrukhabad), Suresh (Gonda), Lalit Yadav (Faizabad), Ramu Kashyap (Hardoi), Mohammad Siddique (Lakhimpur Kheri), Abhishek Gujjar (Meerut), Choudhury Pratap Singh (Ghaziabad), Jai Prakash Agarwal (Ghaziabad city), Narendra Sisodia (Hapur), Islam Pradhan (Baghpat), Dheeraj Tomar (Shamli) and Ilam Singh (Muzaffarnagar).