The Maharashtra unit of the Samajwadi Party (SP) Friday said it would contest around 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state and declared its first list of 13 candidates. SP state unit chief Abu Azmi said his party would contest all six seats in Mumbai. Candidates for four seats in the city were declared on Friday. Interestingly, the party has given a ticket to controversial actor Kamal R Khan from the Mumbai North West Parliamentary constituency. Khan will take on sitting Congress MP Gurudas Kamat and Bollywood director Mahesh Manjrekar who is contesting on an MNS ticket. The names declared on Friday include Kashinath Pasi from Mumbai South Central, former Congress corporator in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Kamlesh Yadav from Mumbai North and sitting SP corporator in BMC Rais Shaikh from Mumbai North East constituency. “Candidates for Mumbai South, Mumbai North Central, Bhiwandi, Pune, Nashik, Dhule, Parbhani and Hingoli will be finalised within three days,” Azmi said. Azmi, MLA from Bhiwandi, did not rule out the possibility of contesting polls himself but said the constituency was yet to be finalised. His son Farhan Azmi has already expressed his willingness to contest the LS polls from Mumbai South constituency. Meanwhile, Independent MLA from Chinchwad Laxman Jagtap, who currently gives outside support to the Congress-NCP government, has decided to contest on a Peasants and Workers’ Party ticket. Jagtap had raised the issue of unauthorised constructions in Pimpri-Chinchwad and had announced he would contest against the Congress-NCP in LS elections because of their inability to solve the issue. When NCP’s first list of candidates was announced last month, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar had said the party had not decided on its candidate from Maval.
