Mulayam’s daughter-in-law Aparna to contest from Lucknow Cantt in UP polls

26-year-old Aparna will contest the 2017 Assembly election from Lucknow's Cantonment Assembly seat.

Aparna is the wife of Mulayam’s younger son Prateek.

Aparna Yadav, the wife of Mulayam’s younger son Prateek.

The Samajwadi Party on Sunday announced that party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav will be the candidate from Lucknow Cantonment in next year’s Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

Mulayam’s other daughter-in-law, Dimple Yadav, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s wife, is already a Lok Sabha MP from Kannauj. Aparna (26), the wife of Mulayam’s younger son Prateek Yadav, is the 20th member of the Yadav family to enter active politics. She is the second member after Mulayam to venture out of the family stronghold of Etawah-Mainpuri-Ferozabad belt to contest elections. Mulayam is currently the MP from Azamgarh.

It will be an uphill task for Aparna, as the SP has never won the Lucknow Cantonment seat in the past. The party was placed fourth in the 2012 Assembly polls.

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For the last few years, Aparna has been actively participating in social service. She was instrumental in organising women’s empowerment programmes in schools and is the brand ambassador of ‘B Aware’ campaign of the NGO Harsh Foundation. She had organised protest meetings in Lucknow, demanding death penalty for the juvenile accused in the Nirbhaya case.

Aparna was the only member of the Yadav family to attend the programme during PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Ambedkar University this January. She had even praised Modi and his Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, shared a selfie with him, and posted against cow slaughter on social media.

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