Samajwadi Party on Saturday announced two more candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.
The party has fielded Pandhari Yadav as its candidate from Phulpur Lok Sabha seat and Rajendra Singh Patel from Allahabad, denying ticket to sitting party MP from Phulpur, Nagendra Singh Patel.
In the 2018 bypoll to Phulpur Lok Sabha
seat, SP candidate Nagendra Patel, with the help of Bahujan Samaj Party, had defeated Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kaushlendra Patel.
Pandhari Yadav is a former district president of the SP while Rajendra Singh Patel was block Pramukh of Bahadurpur in Allahabad.
The Phulpur Lok Sabha seat is associated with India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who registered three successive wins from the seat in 1952, 57 and 62.
The SP also has an impressive record on the Phulpur seat from 1996 onwards and has won it five times, including sitting MP Nagendra Singh Patel’s victory in the by-poll held in March, 2018.
In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Keshav Prasad Maurya of the BJP won from Phulpur but later joined the Yogi Adityanath government as Deputy Chief Minister and had to vacate the seat after becoming member of UP Legislative Council.