Amid a massive feud in Yadav family, the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) on Friday released its first list of 191 candidates for the upcoming polls in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The candidate list covers the first three phases of polling on February 11, February 15 and February 19. Both the BJP and the BSP have announced their candidate lists for the first phase of elections.
Surprisingly, former state president Shivpal Yadav has been allocated ticket from Jaswantnagar from where he was victorious in 2012. The constituency falls in Etawah district and covers Saifai, the native village of SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.
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Some of the other leaders who have been allocated tickets include Arvind Singh Gop, Naresh Agrawal’s son Nitin Agrawal (Hardoi), Azam Khan’s son Abdullah Azam (Suar), Hassan Rumi (Kanpur Cantt), Sunil Choudhary (Noida) and Gaurav Swaroop (Muzaffarnagar). Gop has replaced Beni Prasad Verma’s son Rakesh Verma, earlier expected to be fielded. The candidate list has covered much of the seats in the districts of Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Hapur, Aligarh, Mathura, Saharanpur and Bijnor.
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In the 2012 elections, while the SP got a clear majority with 224 seats, the Congress and RLD fell way short with wins in 28 and 9 seats respectively.