Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will face Union Minister SP Singh Baghel on Karhal seat of Mainpuri where both of them filed nominations on Monday.
Shortly after Akhilesh Yadav filed his nomination, Baghel too followed suit as a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate, ending speculation about Aparna Yadav challenging the SP president in this high-profile seat.
Asked recently about chances of her challenging his brother-in-law Akhilesh Yadav on this seat, SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav had said she would follow the party's directions and that led to the speculation.
After filing his nomination papers, the SP chief said the UP assembly elections will write the country's history for the next century and appealed to people to defeat ”negative politics”.
Yadav said his "mission" is to do ”positive politics with progressive thinking”.
The Karhal assembly seat is part of the Mainpuri parliamentary constituency represented by SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
"This nomination is a mission as this UP election will write the country's history for the next century. Let us take part in this movement of positive politics with progressive thinking. Defeat negative politics, remove it. Jai Hind!," Yadav said in a Hindi tweet.
He also shared a picture of his departure for Mainpuri from his native place Saifai in Etawah on a Samajwadi Vijay Rath bus.
Karhal will go to the polls on February 20 in the third of the seven-phase elections in the state.
"First of all, I want to thank the people of Mainpuri and of the organisation who have given me a chance that I have been nominated today for contesting the elections from Karhal," he told reporters later.
"Positive politics has been carried forward and I hope people of Uttar Pradesh will remove those who do negative politics in this election. Therefore, I appeal to people to give the SP an opportunity not only in Karhal but in every area. The party will take the state on the path of development, prosperity and progress," he said.
On being asked if he will visit the constituency for campaigning, Akhilesh said, "I have left my election to party leaders and people here. I will certainly come if I get a chance. But people here have assured me that there is no need for me to come here. Yes, I will certainly come after winning."
"The result here will be historic and it will be a message for those practising negative politics," he said.
The Karhal constituency is just four kilometres from Saifai, the native village of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Shortly after Akhilesh Yadav filed his nomination, Union minister SP Singh Baghel also reached the Mainpuri collectorate and filed his nomination papers to take on the Samajwadi party chief on the high-profile seat.
Baghel, who is the Lok Sabha MP from Agra (SC) constituency, is the Union minister of state for law and justice.
Sixty-one-year-old Baghel is also an associate professor in military science.
A fourth-term MP, he was earlier a cabinet minister in the UP government, handling the departments of animal husbandry and fisheries, and minor irrigation and underground water.
The Karhal assembly constituency has been with the SP since 1993, except for 2002.
In the 2002 assembly polls, sitting MLA Sobaran Singh had contested on the BJP ticket.
Thereafter, he joined the SP and won three times consecutively.
Karhal has about 3.7 lakh electorate, including 1.4 lakh (37 per cent) Yadavs, 34,000 Shakhyas (OBCs) and around 14,000 Muslims.
Mayawati has fielded Kuldeep Narayan, a Scheduled Caste member, from the Karhal assembly constituency.
