Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav is contesting the Lok Sabha election from Kannauj constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav said that Akhilesh Yadav would file his nomination papers on Thursday.
This will be the fifth Lok Sabha election to be contested by Akhilesh Yadav.
Ram Gopal Yadav said that there was no confusion regarding Akhilesh Yadav’s candidature from the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat.
Earlier in the day, when Akhilesh Yadav was asked about speculations on his nomination, the SP chief said, “When nomination happens then you will come to know. The question is of Kannauj’s historic victory... The people have made up their minds that the INDIA bloc is coming as the future and Bharatiya Janata Party will be consigned to the dustbin of history in this election…”
The SP leader’s statement comes just days after the party declared Tej Pratap Yadav as its candidate from Kannauj on April 22. There were also reports of a local party unit urging the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh to reconsider the decision of fielding his nephew from the SP bastion.
SP workers in Kannauj were reluctant to accept Tej Pratap’s candidacy, and they believed that without Akhilesh Yadav, the BJP would have an edge over them. Akhilesh Yadav had then said that he would do what the party decides.
Tej Pratap Singh Yadav, the grand-nephew of late Mulayam Singh Yadav and son-in-law of Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad Yadav, represented the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat from 2014 to 19. In 2014, Mulayam Singh Yadav had contested from Azamgarh and Mainpuri and won both the Lok Sabha seats but later left the Mainpuri seat from where Tej Pratap Yadav was fielded.
BJP MP Subrat Pathak won the Kannauj seat in the 2019 poll, and had stated that Kannauj was no longer an SP stronghold. Subrata Pathak had won the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat against Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav in 2019. It was only the second time ever that the BJP had won the Kannauj seat; the first was in 1996. Before BJP’s Subrat Pathak sprung the surprise in Kannauj in 2019, the SP had won every election from the constituency since 1998.
SP leaders underline that even when Subrat Pathak won the seat in 2019 by defeating Dimple Yadav, the margin of victory was very narrow. Pathak won by a margin of 12,000 votes, securing 5,63,087 votes against Dimple Yadav’s 5,50,734.
This will be the fifth Lok Sabha election to be contested by Akhilesh Yadav. He made debut in politics from Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency in 1999. He also won from this constituency in 2004. In 2009, he contested from two Lok Sabha constituencies, Kannauj and Firozabad, and won both but he retained Kannauj. In 2019, he contested the Lok Sabha election from Azamgarh and won. He resigned from the Lok Sabha in March 2022 after he won the UP assembly election from Karhal assembly constituency in Mainpuri district.
Apart from Akhilesh Yadav, the other Yadav family members contesting the Lok Sabha elections are Dimple Yadav (Mainpuri), Akshay Yadav (Firozabad), Aditya Yadav (Budaun) and Dharmendra Yadav (Azamgarh).
