Akhilesh’s experiment with Youth:  For SP, debutants with political lineage wrest 3 seats from BJP

Of the remaining 11 candidates, except for Jahid of the Social Democratic Party of India, who got 3,320 votes, all received fewer votes than NOTA, which had 3,249 voters opting for it.

In the 2019 last Lok Sabha election, BJP’s Pradeep Kumar defeated SP’s Tabassum Begum, mother of Iqra Choudhary, by 92,160 votes. Iqra, whose family has been in politics for over four decades, completed her schooling at Queen Mary’s School in New Delhi. She later graduated from Delhi University’s Lady Shri Ram College for Women and did her post-graduation in international politics and law from SOAS, London.

Iqra’s grandfather, Akhtar Hasan and her father, Munawwar Hasan, are both former MPs and her mother, Tabassum Hasan, won the election in 2009. Tabassum Hasan won again in the 2018 bypoll held after the death of then-sitting BJP MP Hukum Singh. Iqra’s elder brother, Nahid Hasan, is a three-time MLA, having won the election in 2022 from the Kairana Assembly seat while contesting from jail.

The Samajwadi Party candidate from Kaushambi, 25-year-old Pushpendra Saroj, won the election, surpassing sitting BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar by a margin of 103,944 votes. Pushpendra received 509,787 votes. There were 10 candidates in the fray, including BSP’s Shubh Narayan, who got 55,858 votes. The seven remaining candidates received fewer votes than NOTA, which 12,967 voters opted for.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Vinod Kumar Sonkar had defeated SP’s Indrajeet Saroj, a five-time MLA and Pushpendra’s father, by 38,722 votes. Despite being part of a political lineage, Pushpendra entered politics after completing his undergraduate studies in accounting and management at Queen Mary University, London. He spent three years abroad before returning to India in 2019.

Priya Saroj, 25, won the election from the Machhlishahr seat, defeating sitting BJP MP Bholanath (BP Saroj) by a margin of 35,850 votes. Priya Saroj received 451,292 votes. She is the daughter of three-time MP Toofani Saroj. There were 12 contestants in the fray, including BSP’s Kripa Shankar Saroj, who got 157,291 votes. The remaining nine candidates could not cross four figures and received fewer votes than NOTA, which had 9,303 votes.

Priya Saroj did her education from Delhi. Upon completing her law degree, she began practicing in the Supreme Court.

In the previous Lok Sabha election, Bholanath (BP Saroj) defeated BJP’s Tribhuvan Ram (T. Ram) by a narrow margin of 181 votes.