As Congress hopes for more, SP first family fixes its LS seats, Akhilesh set for Kannauj

While the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Saturday announced it would give the Congress 11 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh even as the Congress claims seat-sharing talks are still ongoing, members of the Akhilesh Yadav-led party’s founder-family have finalised the seats they will contest and have started their campaign too, sources in the SP said.

Akhilesh is likely to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Kannauj, a party bastion where his wife Dimple Yadav had lost against the BJP by a narrow margin of 12,353 votes in 2019. Dimple first won the seat uncontested in a bypoll, vacated when Akhilesh became the Chief Minister after the SP won the 2012 Assembly polls. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, she was elected from the seat by a thin margin of 19,900 votes.

The SP has won the Kannauj seat five consecutive polls between 1998 and 2014. In the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Akhilesh had contested and won from Kannauj. He first won the seat in a bypoll in 2000. Currently, he is the sitting MLA from Karhal, which falls in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency, another SP stronghold.

For more than a year, Akhilesh has been frequently visiting Kannauj and targeting the BJP government for neglecting development in the constituency. On Friday, he launched the party’s “PDA (Pichde or backward classes, Dalit and Alpsankhyak or minorities) Jan Panchayat Pakhwara” from the Fakeere Purwa village in Kannauj district.

“Social equations are favourable for the SP in Kannauj with the presence of around 4 lakh Muslim and 3 lakh Yadav voters. Other castes and communities too like the leadership of Akhileshji. He will contest from here. In the past, (Akhilesh’s father and party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav) too was elected from Kannauj,” said Kaleem