Lucknow |Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will contest from Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh, the party announced Sunday. The seat is as of now held by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is a party candidate from the family bastion of Manipuri. This announcement came days after Mayawati, Samajwadi Party’s ally announced her decision of not contesting the Lok Sabha polls.
This is the first time that Akhilesh will be contesting from eastern Uttar Pradesh. It was in the 2009 general elections that he tasted victory from Kannauj. He later vacated the seat after taking over as the chief minister in the year 2012. His wife Dimple Yadav, who is the current parliamentarian, will contest from the constituency next month.
As per the sources of a daily, the Azamgarh seat being perceived to be a safe one is the reason why he decided to contest the polls from.
In the year 2014, despite the BJP sweeping on the Lok Sabha seats in the eastern Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh saw triumph with a margin of 63,000 votes. The seat is known to have substantial Yadav and Muslim population, which forms to be the core bank of the SP.
Ever since the year 1989, the Azamgarh seat has been won either by a Yadav or by Mulayam Singh. As a matter of fact, the combined vote-share of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party was a good 63 percent. Ramakant Yadav, the BJP leader who was the sitting lawmaker in those polls got about 29 percent of the votes.
As per the BSP sources, Akhilesh Yadav did not want to stick to one seat in the election. However, Mayawati did not give any cue of her not contesting a parliamentary seat in the times to come.
She tweeted, “When I became UP CM first time in 1995 I was not a member of either UP Assembly or Council. Similarly, is provision at the Centre where a person has to be a LS/RS member within 6 months of holding office of minister/PM. Don’t disheartened from my decision not to contest LS poll now (sic).”
But both the Samajwadi Party and Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) have a different strategy in place. Their party chiefs and important leaders are fighting the election. In the RLD, Ajit Singh and his son Jayant Chaudhary are contesting from seats in western UP.
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