© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
A day after claiming to have offered 17 Lok Sabha seats to the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Tuesday declared its candidate for the Varanasi constituency and appointed two leaders as in-charge for Amroha. Both Varanasi and Amroha featured in the list of 17 seats offered to the Congress.
In the high-profile Varanasi constituency from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been elected twice, the SP has fielded former minister Surendra Singh Patel, an OBC leader.
The party has appointed Mehboob Ali and Ram Avatar Saini as in-charge of Amroha, indicating that either Ali or Saini will contest from the west UP seat if the Congress decides not to fight from there. In the last Lok Sabha elections, Amroha was won by Danish Ali from the BSP. Following his suspension from the BSP, Ali has come close to the Congress and attended the launch of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, led by Rahul Gandhi, in Manipur.
In the list of candidates declared on Tuesday, SP president Akhilesh Yadav has replaced his cousin brother Dharmendra Yadav with uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav in Badaun.
In the first list of candidates released on January 30, the SP had announced Dharmendra’s candidature from Badaun. On Tuesday, the SP appointed him as in-charge of both Kannauj and Azamgarh, dropping hints that he may contest the Lok Sabha election from either of the two seats that are considered SP strongholds. Dharmendra had, however, faced defeat in Azamgarh bypoll in 2022.
The other four new candidates declared on Tuesday include Ikra Hasan from Kairana, Praveen Singh Aron from Bareilly, Ajendra Singh Rajput from Hamirpur, and Surendra Singh Patel from Varanasi. Ikra is the sister of SP MLA from Kairana Nahid Hasan and daughter of former MP Tabassum Begum. Former MP Aron had lost the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Bareilly on Congress symbol.
So far, the SP has declared candidates for 31 Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh.
Sources in the SP that the 17 seats offered to the Congress include Raebareli, Amethi, Kanpur, Bansgaon, Fatehpur Sikri, Prayagraj, Saharanpur, Maharajganj, Amroha, Varanasi, Bulandshahr, Jhansi, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Deoria, Barabanki and Deoria.
“Till date, the Congress has not given any response to the list of 17 seats offered to it by the SP. So, the SP is keeping itself prepared to contest those seats,” SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhry said.
Sources in the SP said that the delay in finalising the seat-sharing agreement with the Congress was because the latter was asking for three more seats, including Rampur and Moradabad where the SP had won in 2019. The third seat being sought by the Congress is Ballia.
“The SP had won both Moradabad and Rampur in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and therefore there is no point in leaving these seats to the Congress. The SP had lost Ballia then but with a very small margin of 15,519 votes. So, we are not going to leave Ballia to the Congress,” said an SP leader.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday said that he would join Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra only after the seat-sharing is finalised between the two parties.
“We are in the process (of finalising). Our alliance team is there, and the Congress president has appointed a team of leaders for alliance. The discussion is going on. It will be finalised any time. Wait for some time,” Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said. “We are hopeful of a solution,” the senior Congress leader added.
