The Samajwadi Party on Tuesday announced the third list of its candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. The list includes Shivpal Yadav, uncle of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav. He will contest from Budaun.
The other candidates are Iqra Hasan from Kairana, Praveen Singh Aron from Bareilly, Ajendra Singh Rajpur from Hamirpur, and Surendra Singh Patel from Varanasi.
The party also announced the names of four incharges for Lok Sabha seats — Mahboob Ali (Amroha), Ramavatar Saini (Kannauj & Azamgarh), and Dharmendra Yadav & Manoj Chaudhary (Baghpat).
The Samajwadi Party had on Monday declared its second list of 11 candidates, including sitting BSP MP Afzal Ansari, who has been fielded from Ghazipur seat. He is the elder brother of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari.
The second SP list, like the previous one, is also PDA (Pichada, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) oriented. It has one Muslim, five OBC, and four Dalit candidates, including two women. There is also an upper caste candidate on the list.
The SP has so far declared candidates for a total of 32 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. In its first list of 16 released on January 30, there were five seats that the Congress wanted. Thus, both the lists, in a way, are public repudiation of Congress’s demand.
The other candidates on second list released on Monday included Harendra Malik (Jat-OBC) from Muzaffarnagar, party MLA Neeraj Maurya (OBC) from Aonla, Rajesh Kashyap (OBC) from Shahjahanpur, Usha Verma (Dalit) from Hardoi, Rampal Rajvanshi (Dalit) from Mishrikh, SP Singh Patel (OBC) from Pratapgarh, Ramesh Gautam (Dalit) from Bahraich, Shreya Verma (OBC) from Gonda, Virendra Singh (Thakur) from Chandauli, and Afzal Ansari from Ghazipur.
So far, the SP is the only party that has declared its candidates for the 2024 LS polls. In the two lists, there are at least eight seats that the Congress desired — Kheri, Dhaurahra, Farrukhabad, Akbarpur, Faizabad, Pratapgarh, Bahraich, and Gonda. The Congress had won these seats in the 2009 LS polls.