Samajwadi Party’s (SP) office in Kannauj wore a festive look on Thursday morning as party Chief and Uttar Pradesh’s former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is expected to file his nomination papers from Kannauj Lok Sabha Seat for the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections, amidst the allegations of ‘parivarwaad’. SP karyakartas have hailed the party’s decision of fielding Akhilesh Yadav from Kannauj. “Akhilesh Bhaiya would win with a historic margin in Kannauj,” some party workers said, while a few called it the beginning of the battle to oust Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from UP.
SP’s announcement on fielding Akhilesh Yadav as a candidate from Kannauj came on Wednesday, two days after the party had declared former MP Tej Pratap Yadav, who is Yadav’s nephew and son-in-law of former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad, as its candidate from the seat. “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 on X.
Kannauj will go to the polls in the fourth phase on May 13.
Though the last minute changes in SP’s plan came as a shocker to the political parties and UP’s political pundits, the people within the party welcomed the decision with open arms, stating that “Akhilesh Bhaiya would win Kannauj seat by a historic margin.” “It’s a big day for all of us as Akhilesh Bhaiya will be filing his nomination papers today from Kannauj Lok Sabha Seat. We always wanted him to contest. We would make him win with a historical margin,” said Mazharul Haque, SP’s district president, Kannauj, who thronged the party office on Thursday morning to look after the preparations and to greet SP Chief in a big way.
Vibha Shukla, SP State President, while hailing the party’s decision of fielding Akhilesh Yadav from Kannauj, called it a new beginning, which will shove BJP out of UP politics. “We would make Akhilesh ji win. He would win with a margin of more than 3 lakh votes and this historical victory would mark the beginning of the poll battle that will shove BJP out of UP Politics,” said Shukla.
However, this is not the first time when SP changed its mind at the last moment. So far, the Samajwadi Party has switched about 10 candidates for Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha seats such as Badaun, Meerut, Baghpat, Gautam Buddh Nagar, and Bijnor. Changing electoral candidates is not new in politics, say analysts. But what has raised eyebrows in the SP’s case is the scale of it, they point out. Many political rivals and analysts in UP have criticised SP for such actions. They have also called it a “sign of fear”, “poor input mechanism”, and “desperate bid to save the first family”.
BJP spokesperson Anand Dubey said that his party has a strong mechanism through which the names of candidates are shortlisted at various levels and announced only after the nod of the central committee. “But the entire mechanism of the SP seems to have been dismantled. The frequent changing of names of candidates reflects a fear of the BJP and a state of confusion. Akhilesh Yadav, who inherited the party from his father, actually doesn’t know how to run the party, whom to field, and from where,” Dubey said.
The BJP spokesperson also alleged that Akhilesh Yadav was just the face of the SP while key decisions were being made by others. While leveling allegations of parivarwaad against Akhilesh Yadav, Dubey said that the SP is contesting Lok Sabha Polls only to protect the family (parivar).
However amid the allegations, SP’s Kannauj Party office continued to celebrate ever since the reports of the SP Chief filing nomination from Kannauj on Thursday, surfaced. Kannauj Lok Sabha Seat is considered among the strongholds of SP. SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav who started his political career from Kannauj itself, has represented the seat three times in a row in 2000 (bypoll), 2004, and 2009. In Lok Sabha elections 2014, Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav, an SP candidate, won with 4,88,946 votes and BJP candidate Subrat Pathak lost. The victory margin was 19,964 votes. However in Lok Sabha Elections 2019, Subrat Pathak of BJP party won with 5,61,286 votes while Dimple Yadav, the SP candidate remained a runner up. The margin of victory was 12,086 votes.
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