LUCKNOW: Belying the tall claims of ‘social inclusiveness’ during the recently concluded Assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party seems to have gone back to its basics, banking more upon its core vote bank in the upcoming Vidhan Parishad (UP Legislative Council) polls by fielding 16 of the 22 candidates from the Yadav community.
During the Assembly elections, the SP had given a push to social engineering to wash off the tag of being a party of only Muslims and Yadavs. Among the other six candidates declared by the party so far, two are Muslims including Dr Kafeel Khan, paediatrician for the Deoria–Kushinagar seat, and Maqsoor Ahmad for the Rampur-Bareily segment. The four others are Anurag Verma for Lakhimpur Kheri, Virendra Shankar Singh for Rae Bareli, Bhanu Kumar for Gonda and Arunesh Kumar for Sitapur.
The party has placed its bet on youngsters with almost 50% candidates being first-timers and denied tickets to non-performing members who were part of the council earlier.
The voting for the MLC polls on 36 seats across 35 local bodies of the state will be held on April 9 and counting of votes will be held on April 12. All the public representatives right from the MLAs to corporators and district panchayat members will vote for their respective region wise seats in these polls. Etah-Mathura-Mainpuri segment elects two candidates.
The list released by the SP so far includes the names of Anurag Verma (Kheri), Manoj Kumar Yadav (Jaunpur), Umesh Kumar Yadav (Varanasi), Amar Yadav (Bahraich), Vijay Bahadur Yadav (Pratapgarh) and Dileep Singh Yadav (Agra-Ferozabad), sitting MLC Sunil Singh Yadav ‘Sajan’ from Lucknow-Unnao seat, Rajesh Yadav (Barabanki), Amit Yadav (Pilibhit–Shahjahanpur), Rajneesh Yadav
(Gorakhpur–Maharajganj), Shyam Sunder Singh Yadav (Jhansi–Jalaun–Lalitpur), Santosh Yadav (Basti–Siddharthnagar), Virendra Shanker Singh (Rae Bareli), Heera Lal Yadav (Faizabad), Rajesh Kumar Yadav alias Guddu (Azamgarh–Mau), Udaiveer Singh Yadav for Etah-Mathura-Mainpuri, Maqsoor Ahmed (Rampur–Bareilly) and Dr Kafeel Khan for Doeria-Kushinagar.
Late on Thursday evening, the party announced four more names -- Arvind Yadav (Ballia), Bhola Nath Yadav (Ghazipur), Bhanu Kumar (Gonda) and Arunesh Kumar (Sitapur) -- taking the list of candidates to 22.
Sources said the party has authorised almost all the 36 candidates to file their nominations and was unlikely to officially release more names. The candidates have been asked to file their nominations directly.