LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday capped speculation around party chief Akhilesh Yadav contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, naming former MP Tej Pratap Singh Yadav as the candidate from the Kannauj parliamentary constituency.
Tej Pratap Singh Yadav, 36, is Akhilesh’s nephew and debuted in the Lok Sabha from the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in 2014 after the late SP founder, Mulayam Singh Yadav won Mainpuri and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in the general elections and decided to retain Azamgarh. Monday’s announcement confirms that Akhilesh Yadav will not contest from Kannauj where he first won his Lok Sabha election in 2000.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Subrat Pathak won the Kannauj seat against Akhilesh’s wife Dimple Yadav in 2019. It was only the second time ever that the BJP had won the seat; the first was in 1996.
The buzz around Akhilesh Yadav’s candidature from Kannauj comes against the backdrop of his aggressive outreach campaign in the constituency, particularly over the last two years, to underscore that Kannauj was “my home” and that he could not stay away from its people.
Before the BJP’s Subrat Pathak sprung the 2019 surprise in Kannauj, the SP won every election on the seat since 1998.
SP leaders underline that even when Subrat Pathak won the seat in 2019 by defeating Dimple Yadav, it was by a very narrow victory margin. Pathak won by a margin of 12,000 votes, securing 563,087 votes against Dimple Yadav’s 550,734.
With Monday’s announcement, the total number of Yadav family members contesting this polls rises to five. Apart from Tej Prarap, the other candidates are Dimple Yadav(Mainpuri), Akshay Yadav (Firozabad), Aditya Yadav (Badaun), and Dharmendra Yadav (Azamgarh).
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