Candidates confused as SP wavers over election tickets

The Samajwadi Party had announced its list of candidates in May. But in the past one and a half months,several candidates have been changed. The most glaring examples are Lambhua constituency in Sultanpur district and Ajgara constituency in Varanasi district.

In Lambhua,the party has changed its candidate four times since October. First,Santosh Pandey’s name was announced. After protests from his brother Anil Pandey,he was dropped in favour of Anil. Within days,Santosh was again named as candidate. On November 11,he was dropped a second time and Indu Prakash Mishra named. Within a fortnight,the party decided Mishra was not a strong candidate and replaced him with Surabhi Shukla.

“Mishra is an advocate by profession. As the dispute between the two Pandey brothers did not seem to be ending,Mishra was fielded by the party. But Shukla was finally chosen because the party will have a woman’s face here,” explained an SP leader.

However,he admitted that the frequent changes had created uncertainty and now other leaders think they may be eventually named candidate. “But the final candidates will be decided by Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) himself,” he added.

In Ajgara,which is a reserved constituency,Lalji Sonkar was named candidate against BSP’s T Ram,a former engineer-in-chief of PWD. However,on October 19,the SP dropped Sonkar and named Bhaiyalal Kannaujia,taking local partymen by surprise.

“Sonkar was doing quite well. Suddenly his candidature was cancelled and Kannaujia was named. Now,Sonkar has again been named,but Kannaujia and some others are still lobbying,hoping that Sonkar will be dropped,” said a local leader.

A senior leader said only about 20 candidates had been changed and this would not have any impact on the party’s performance. “This is not an unusual thing before elections,” he said.

But another leader said frequent changes created an impression that the leadership was indecisive. “You should be clear on whom you are fielding and why. Once a candidate’s ticket is cancelled,whatever the reason,there is no point restoring it. It creates a lot of problems for local leaders and mistrust among the public,” he said.

The worst was state SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to cancel as many as 13 tickets on November 24,and then restoring 12 of them in less than a week,said one of the candidates.

However,SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary claimed the changes would only strengthen the party. “A change is made when there are reports against a candidate. We want to field only those candidates who have 100 per cent chance of winning,” he said.

Chaudhary said that by month-end,the list of candidates will be final. The SP has announced candidates for 392 of the 403 Assembly constituencies.