LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi party, on Saturday, released another list of six candidates. Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's cousin Dharmendra has been fielded from Azamgarh.
The other candidates are Dr Mahendra Nagar from Gautam Budhh Nagar, Manoj Rajvanshi from Mishrikh, Bheem Nishad from Sultanpur, Jitendra Dohre from Etawah and Narain Das Ahirwar from Jalaun.
The Samajwadi Party has 63 candidates available to contest, while the Congress, their partner in the INDI Alliance, has 17 candidates, as per the seat-sharing agreement.
The SP is supposed to accommodate the smaller allies like Apna Dal (Kamerawadi), a break-away group of Apna Dal (Sonelal), sparing seats from its quota.
Interestingly, out of the 43 candidates that have been announced so far, four of them happen to be family members of Akhilesh Yadav including his wife Dimple Yadav (Mainpuri), cousin Akshay Yadav (Firozabad), cousin Dharmendra Yadav (Azamgarh) and uncle Shivpal Yadav (Badaun).
As per the speculations dominating the political circles of UP, SP chief may contest from Kannauj thus taking the clan figure to five.
Azamgarh is believed to be the stronghold of Samajwadi Party which won all the 10 assembly segments under the parliamentary constituency during 2022 UP Assembly elections. Then Akhilesh Yadav was the sitting MP from Azamgarh.
However, the party lost its bastion, dominated by Muslim and Yadav population, to the BJP in June 2022 bypoll as Akhilesh had vacated the seat to retain Karhal assembly segment which he had won in 2022 state polls.
The SP had fielded Dharmendra Yadav as a safe candidate to take the family legacy forward but he lost it to BJP's Dinesh Lal Nirhaua by a slender margin of 8,679 votes.
Dharmendra Yadav and Dinesh Lal Nirhaua are once again set to fight for the Azamgarh seat as their respective parties have fielded them for the Lok Sabha polls this year.
The experts, however, feel that the road for Nirhaua will not be easy this time as Guddu Jamali, who was fielded by the BSP in the bypoll and had led to the division of Muslim votes, is now in the SP camp and has been nominated to UP Counsil by Akhilesh.
So far, the SP has spared the Bhadohi seat from its quota for Trinamool Congress party which has fielded Laliteshpati Tripathi, the Congress turncoat and great-grandson of former UP CM and Congress stalwart Kamlapati Tripathi.
The Congress, which has released two lists of 40 candidates each for multiple states, is yet to open its cards in UP.
The seat will go to poll in the sixth poll along with a dozen other eastern UP constituencies.