Dimple Yadav, wife of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, will contest the Kannauj Lok Sabha by-election as a Samajwadi Party candidate. "As per the wish of the party workers, the central parliamentary board of the party has decided that Dimple Yadav will contest the by-election for Kannauj seat," SP national general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav told reporters. Akhilesh Yadav had contested from the Firozabad and Kannauj seat in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh has blamed the party's loss in the Firozabad Lok Sabha bypoll on the overconfidence of its chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and said Yadav "behaved symbolically like Mayawati" while campaigning in the constituency.
Polling for the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections for 94 seats will take place today, covering 11 States and Union Territory.
Polling for one Lok Sabha and 31 assembly seats spread across seven states started on Saturday morning amid tight security. As polling started at 8 am, voters were seen trickling in at some booths. The most hi-profile electoral battle is being held between Congress' actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar, who is pitched against Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in- law Dimple, in the Firozabad Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh.
The Samajwadi Party on Tuesday suffered a major setback when it lost the prestigious Firozabad Lok Sabha seat, with party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law losing to actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar of the Congress, by a huge margin of over 85,000 votes. Babbar, a former Member of Parliament from Agra who rebelled against the SP and joined the Congress before the Lok Sabha elections in May, secured 3,12,728 votes while Dimple Yadav got 2,27,385 votes.
The defeat of Dimple Yadav, the young daughter-in-law of Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav to Bollywood actorturned-politician Raj Babbar in the Firozabad Lok Sabha by-election was a writing on the wall.
Virtually signalling the end of their ties, the Samajwadi Party on Wednesday lashed out at the Congress for contesting the Firozabad Lok Sabha bypoll against Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law Dimple.
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
There was no immediate reaction from the PSPL on the inclusion of Shivpal Singh Yadav's name in the SP's list of campaigners.
Babbar was elected from Agra as its Lok Sabha MP twice -- in 1999 and 2004. However, following delimitation in 2008, the Lok Sabha seat became reserved for the scheduled castes.
The party will also leave two seats for the Apna Dal, and entered into an electoral agreement with the lesser known Jan Adhikar Party.
Dinesh Pratap Singh, who was elected to the state legislative council for the second time in 2016 and left the Congress last year, is pitted against UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on a seat held by her since 2004.
"The victory margin will be huge since there is an alliance between Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party. Bharatiya Janata Party did not fulfil its promises and now to divert attention, it is using the security forces. It has been a failed government," Dimple Yadav said.
Keen to regain lost ground after the drubbing in Lok Sabha polls, Samajwadi Party supreme Mulayam Singh Yadav on Sunday met UP Ministers and asked them to ensure the party's victory in bypolls to 12 assembly seats.
Swami Prasad Maurya, who recently stirred controversy over his remarks on Ramcharitmanas, and veteran leader Azam Khan are also among the 14 national general secretaries.
The Samajwadi Party released its list of 40 star campaigners in which there was no mention of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Mayawati made it amply clear that her party will not enter into any alliance with the Congress.
The party has left Mainpuri, described as its "safest" seat, for Mulayam Yadav, who is the MP from Azamgarh right now.
Somaiya, an old BJP hand and one of its leading speakers on economic issues in Parliament, had been a trenchant critic of the Sena.
In the third phase of the Lok Sabha election on April 23, 116 seats spread across 13 states and two Union Territories, will go to the polls.
Samajwadi party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law Dimple is the first lady from the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister's family to take a plunge into politics.
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
The BJP's bucket list this time includes districts such as Sultanpur, Aligarh, Firozabad, Deoband, Ghazipur, Basti and Mirzapur -- to rename a few. Virendra Singh Rawat reports.
Samajwadi Party on Friday declared its first list of candidates for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections with its president Mulayam Singh Yadav seeking another term from his Mainpuri seat.
Hours after Mayawati announced her plans of going solo in future elections in a series of tweets, a senior SP leader accused her of "weakening" the fight for social justice.
The first of the two-phase urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh will take place on Thursday, a major poll battle in the politically crucial state ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.
Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav's son Akhilesh said he would give credit to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for Raj Babbar's landslide victory in the recent Lok Sabha by-poll at Firozabad.
The decision was announced by Ghulam Nabi Azad in New Delhi at a press briefing.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav may not have been able to fix the responsibility for the Samajwadi Party's dismal performance at the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.
Rattled by Samajwadi Party's rout in Lok Sabha polls, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday sacked 36 leaders having status of minister of state in his government but ruled out his resignation.
Mayawati added that the BSP's relationship with the SP is never going to end and she will try to ensure that their relationship stays intact.
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Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday kick-started his three-day-long road show in Uttar Pradesh.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday held a meeting with the party's unsuccessful Lok Sabha nominees to find out the cause of its dismal performance in Uttar Pradesh, where it bagged only five of 80 seats.
Union Minister P Chidambaram has opted out of the Lok Sabha election with the party on Thursday night nominating his son Karti from his constituency Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu while another Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was brought as a candidate from Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir.
Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav's demise might not have any direct political impact on the party, but its president Akhilesh Yadav will now have to work without his 'shield and shadow'.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is headed for a big win in the Uttar Pradesh legislative council polls, bagging Barabanki and Ayodhya and leading in several other places. But it lost Varanasi to an Independent candidate.
The kings of the ruling family of India's heartland -- father Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Samajwadi party supremo, and son Akhilesh Yadav, the UP chief minister -- are at war. And as on any chessboard, the queens have emerged as the power centres. Meet Dimple Yadav and Aparna Yadav.
Opportunistic face of SP has come before the people: Yogi Adityanth.
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