The Samajwadi Party (SP) has dashed all hopes of the Congress for a last-minute electoral pact with it by releasing its list of candidates for the crucial state of UP. Of the 70 Lok Sabha seats the SP has kept for itself (10 seats are given to ally Ajit Singh’s RLD), the party has finalised candidates for 63 seats. In an attempt to hit out at its main rival, the BSP, the party has fielded 11 Muslims, 19 OBCs (Yadavs, Kurmis), 17 upper castes (Brahmins, Thakurs, Jats) apart from SC/STs from reserved seats.Among the finalists are surprise candidates like former Bollywood actress Jayaprada, who will contest from Rampur, presently held by the Congress. The actress was once a close confidante of TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu and was his party’s Rajya Sabha MP for one term. At the other end is Atiq Khan, who has several criminal cases against him and who will contest from Phoolpur.The party has renominated 17 MPs, including CM Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son Akhilesh Yadav, who will contest from Kannauj, his cousin Ram Gopal Yadav who will contest from Sambhal, and former Bollywood actor Raj Babbar who will contest from Agra. There are 16 former MPs, two state ministers and three MLAs in the list.The SP is yet to name candidates for crucial seats of Amethi (where Rahul Gandhi will contest from), Ballia (former PM Chandrashekhar’s seat), Pratapgarh (Raja Bhaiyya’s seat), and Mainpuri, setting off speculation that Mulayam will contest from here. It has, however, announced the name of Revati Raman Singh from Allahabad, where HRD Minister M.M. Joshi is seeking re-election, while former Union Minister Beni Prasad Verma will take on the BJP’s new entrant, Arif Mohammad Khan, in Kaiserganj.SP spokesperson Amar Singh, meanwhile, blamed the Congress for the failure to forge a secular alliance in the forthcoming elections. Calling the Congress ‘‘an incorrigible flirt’’ for making overtures to the BSP while talking to the SP, Singh said: ‘‘The Congress has only itself to blame for a multi-cornered contest. However, we will not be helping the BJP as there will be secular polarisation and not division of secular votes. It is time secular parties accepted the SP as the dominant party in the state’’.Singh also said the SP had held back the announcement of its candidate from Amethi but he had no inkling Sonia would shift to Rae Bareilly, from where the SP already declared its candidate last week. He said there was no question of withdrawing the candidate, Ashok Singh, now. ‘‘He has already started to campaign in the constituency,’’ said Singh.The party also announced three candidates each from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and one from Haryana, prominent among whom was former Congress president Sitaram Kesri’s brother, Rajiv Ranjan Sahu, from Sitamarhi in Bihar.
