LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will contest the Lok Sabha elections from Kannauj, the party announced on Wednesday, two days after it had declared another candidate for the Uttar Pradesh seat.
The party said Akhilesh Yadav will now file his papers on Thursday, when nominations begin.
"National president Akhilesh Yadav will file his nomination papers from the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat at 12 pm tomorrow as Samajwadi Party candidate," the party posted in Hindi on X in the evening.
TNIE had reported on Tuesday that Akhilesh had agreed to contest the polls from Kannauj following pressure from the district unit. Party sources said that workers were mounting pressure on him to contest from his bastion. In fact, Akhliesh had agreed to contest following a phone call with a delegation of Samajwadi Party workers from Kannauj.
On Monday, the SP had declared his nephew Tej Pratap Yadav as its candidate for the Kannauj parliamentary seat.
Earlier in the day, when reporters asked Akhilesh about his plans, he said, "It will be clear before the nominations."
"Maybe you will get to know before nominations," he said, answering further questions.
When asked whether party workers in Kannauj wanted him to contest from the seat, Yadav said, "The question here is of historic victory from the seat. The BJP will become history in this election as people have made up their mind for INDIA bloc. People are going to vote against the NDA.
"PDA will defeat the NDA this time," he said. PDA stands for picchde (backwards), Dalits and alpsankhyak (minorities).
Tej Pratap was the SP MP from Mainpuri between 2014-2019. He is also the son-in-law of RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Akhilesh had won the Kannauj parliamentary seat first in 2000 and later represented it in 2004 and 2009. He vacated the seat after he became the Uttar Pradesh chief minister in 2012, and his wife Dimple Yadav won the by-election unopposed.
Dimple also won in 2014 but lost the seat to BJP's Subrat Pathak in 2019.
Akhilesh, an MLA from the Karhal assembly seat in Mainpuri, is the Leader of Opposition in the UP assembly.
Voting for Kannauj seat will be held on May 13 in the fourth phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
(With inputs from PTI)
