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Journalism of Courage
The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday fielded party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s nephew Tej Pratap Yadav from Kannauj, putting to rest speculation about whether the former chief minister will enter the poll fray from the family bastion.
Tej Pratap, 36, is the fifth member of the family contesting the Lok Sabha polls. While Akhilesh’s wife Dimple is contesting from Mainpuri, a seat the SP has been winning since 1999, Yadav’s cousins Akshay, Dharmendra, and Aditya are contesting from Firozabad, Azamgarh, and Badaun respectively. Most of these seats have been Yadav family strongholds and have either been contested by members of the family or those close to them in the past.
With the Kannauj announcement — the seat votes in the fourth phase on May 13 — being delayed, there was speculation about whether Akhilesh will contest from there. According to party leaders, Yadav is focussing on the “larger strategy for the party”.
“Akhilesh ji has a bigger responsibility to wipe out the BJP from Uttar Pradesh. There are 80 Lok Sabha seats that he has to campaign and manage. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is also not contesting,” said SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary.
SP founder and former Uttar Pradesh Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh’s father, won Kannauj for the first time in 1999. Akhilesh won the seat in 2000 and retained it two more times until 2009. In a 2012 by-election, held after Akhilesh vacated the seat to take over as Chief Minister, Dimple won the constituency unopposed.
Dimple retained the seat in 2014 but five years later, the BJP’s Subrat Pathak defeated her by 13,000 votes.
In Kannauj, Tej Pratap, who is the grandson of Mulayam’s elder brother, will take on Pathak who has again received the BJP ticket and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Imran Bin Zafar.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Mulayam won both the Mainpuri and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats but later vacated Mainpuri. Tej Pratap won it in a subsequent by-election.
Tej Pratap is the son-in-law of former Bihar Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad Yadav. He is married to Lalu’s youngest daughter Raj Laxmi.
