Aparna Yadav in new SP list of 37 names

The nominees, announced by SP state president Naresh Uttam, included candidates from 27 seats which the party had won in the 2012 UP polls. In Lucknow, the party has re-nominated three sitting MLAs — Abhishek Mishra (Lucknow North), Ravidas Mehrotra (Lucknow Central) and Mohammad Rehan (Lucknow West). Mishra and Mehrotra are members of the Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s Cabinet.

Aparna, who will take on BJP’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi — a former MLA from the constituency who recently joined the party after quitting Congress — was first named as the SP nominee in April last year. Later, a leaked candidate list on behalf of Akhilesh amid his power tussle with his father Mulayam and uncle Shivpal, did not name any candidate for seat.

In Azamgarh, the Lok Sabha constituency of Mulayam, while the party has chosen to repeat its sitting MLAs on seven seats, two have been replaced. While Mehnagar MLA Brijlal Sonkar has been replaced by Kalpnath Saroj, Wasim Ahmed, MoS for Primary Education, has been dropped from his seat Atrauliya. Nafees Ahmed will contest in his place.

In Ghazipur, the party has replaced minister Vijay Kumar Mishra with Rajesh Kushwaha. Moreover, Shadab Fatima, sacked from the Cabinet by Akhilesh during his power tussle with Shivpal and Mulayam, has been replaced by Mahendra Chauhan. In Gorakhpur’s Pipraich, sitting MLA Rajmati Nishad’s son Amrendra will contest from. The party has named Vijay Bahadur Yadav, the BJP MLA who had defected to SP last year, as the candidate from Gorakhpur Rural.

SP has also changed its candidates on three seats. While it named Abdul Shahnawaz Khan as the candidate from Saharanpur Dehat in place of Gufran Ahmed, Meera Bano has been fielded from Srinagar seat of Kheri in place of Ram Sharan. Surbhi will be party candidate from Kaimganj in Farrukhabad in place of Amit Katheriya. Uttam said names of seats to be contested by both Congress and SP would be announced soon. “Akhilesh will start his campaign from Tuesday with a public meeting in Sultanpur… The next public meeting will be held in Lakhimpur,” SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said.