Looking to get a head start in the by-elections to 10 Uttar Pradesh Assembly seats slated for later this year, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has announced its six candidates, five of whom are family members of the former MLAs of these seats. Four of these five nominees are poll debutants. The SP has named Tej Pratap Yadav as its candidate from the Karhal seat, Ajit Prasad from Milkipur, Shobhavati Verma from Katehari, Naseem Solanki from Sisamau, Jyoti Bind from Majhwan, and Mustafa Siddiqui from Phulpur. Four of these seats — Karhal, Milkipur, Katehari and Sisamau — are the SP’s sitting ones. The SP’s decision to allot tickets to the family members of the seats’ ex-legislators has drawn flak from the ruling BJP, which has long targeted it for allegedly undermining democracy by indulging in “parivarvad” (dynasty politics). State BJP spokesman Rakesh Tripathi said, “The way Samajwadi Party has announced its candidates for bypolls has again proved that basically it is “Parivarvadi Party”. Their chief can only be from one family (Mulayam Singh Yadav's family). And when it comes to by-elections, family members of established party leaders are chosen. For them workers are only meant to lay the carpets at the party events and shout slogans.” The SP has however strongly justified the naming of these candidates, maintaining that they are “popular leaders in their areas in their own right and have their own identity”. Nine of the 10 seats bound for the bypolls were vacated as their incumbent MLAs quit to retain the Lok Sabha constituencies they won in the recent general elections. The remaining one, Sishamau, was vacated following the disqualification of its SP MLA Irfan Solanki after he was convicted in a criminal case. Five of these seats were held by the SP, three by the BJP, and one each by the BJP’s allies RLD and NISHAD party. The Karhal seat in Mainpuri district was won by SP president Akhilesh Yadav in the 2022 Assembly elections, but he resigned as its MLA after getting elected as a Lok Sabha MP. For the bypoll from the seat, Akhilesh has nominated his nephew and ex-MP Tej Pratap Yadav. Tej Pratap, 36, is the grandson of SP founder late Mulayam Singh Yadav’s elder brother. Tej Pratap had first come to limelight when he was chosen by Mulayam to carry on with his legacy in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency, which he vacated to retain Azamgarh after winning from both the seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Tej Pratap had then clinched the Mainpuri seat bypoll. He is also the son-in-law of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the SP had declared Tej Pratap as its nominee from Kannauj, but later Akhilesh decided to contest from the seat himself. In Milkipur in Ayodhya district, the SP has fielded Ajit Prasad, son of the party's Dalit face Awadhesh Prasad, who quit as the MLA from the seat after winning the Ayodhya (Faizabad) seat in the Lok Sabha polls, where he handed a shock defeat to BJP veteran Lallu Singh by over 54,000 votes. Ajit was recently in the news after an FIR was lodged against him in a kidnapping and assault case. The BJP used the incident to charge the SP leaders with “hooliganism”, while the SP alleged “political vendetta” by the ruling party. This is going to be Ajit's poll debut. In the 2017 Assembly elections, SP sources said, he was picked as a party candidate from the Jagdishpur seat, which has a sizeable number of voters from the Pasi (SC) community that he belongs to. However, the SP had then forged an alliance with the Congress, and this seat was allotted to the latter. In the Katehari Assembly constituency, the SP has nominated Shobhavati Verma, the wife of ex-party MLA Lalji Verma who vacated the seat after bagging the Ambedkar Nagar constituency in the Lok Sabha polls. The Katehari seat had been a stronghold of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls, former BSP leader Lalji Verma joined the SP and contested on its ticket successfully. This will also be the first Assembly election for Shobhavati, who has been a former Zila Panchayat chairman. Days before she was declared as the SP candidate, Shobhawati kicked off her campaigning in Katehari. In the Sisamau seat in Kanpur, which became vacant following its MLA Irfan Solanki's disqualification, the SP has given its ticket to his wife Naseem Solanki, hoping to capitalise on “sympathy votes”. SP sources said that there were several contenders for the ticket and that Naseem's nomination may cause some resentment within the party. The party however believes that despite being a debutant she would be able to consolidate votes for her, given Solanki’s significant support base in the constituency. Naseem said it was not a moment to rejoice over her candidature, but a time for “sangharsh” (struggle). The SP has nominated Jyoti Bind from Majhawan, who is the daughter of party leader Ramesh Bind, who had lost to Apna Dal (S) chief Anupriya Patel in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls from the Mirzapur constituency. While this is the first election for Jyoti, her father Ramesh Chand had been a three-time BSP MLA from Majhawan from 2007 to 2017. He later joined the BJP and got elected as its MP from Bhadohi in 2019. However, before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, he joined the SP fold. In the Phulpur constituency in Prayagraj district, the SP has fielded Mujtaba Siddiqui. The seat was vacated after the sitting BJP MLA Praveen Patel quit after being elected on the party’s ticket from the Phulpur Lok Sabha constituency. Mujtaba had lost to Praveen in the Phulpur Assembly seat in 2022 with a narrow margin. In an apparent snub to the Congress, the SP named its candidates for six seats, including Phulpur and Majhawan, which the former was keen to contest, on Wednesday, a day after the Assembly election results in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir in which the Congress fared poorly.
