SP names Tej Pratap as its Kannauj pick, rests speculations on Akhilesh

The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday named party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s nephew Tej Pratap Singh Yadav as the candidate from Kannauj to rest speculations of Akhilesh contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha polls from the seat.

Now, five Yadav family members are contesting Lok Sabha polls. They are: Tej Prarap Singh Yadav (Kannauj), Akhilesh’s wife Dimple Yadav (Mainpuri), Akshay Yadav (Firozabad), Aditya Yadav (Badaun), and Dharmendra Yadav (Azamgarh).

Tej Pratap Singh Yadav, 36, made his debut in Lok Sabha from the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in 2014 after the SP founder, the late Mulayam Singh Yadav won Mainpuri and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in the general elections and decided to retain Azamgarh.

Monday’s announcement confirmed that Akhilesh Yadav will not contest from Kannauj where he won his first Lok Sabha election in 2000.

The buzz around Akhilesh Yadav’s candidature from Kannauj had come against the backdrop of his aggressive outreach campaign in the constituency, particularly over the last two years. He emphasised that Kannauj was his “home” and that he could not stay away from its people.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Subrat Pathak won the Kannauj seat against Akhilesh’s wife Dimple Yadav in 2019. It was the second time that the BJP had won the seat; the first was in 1996.

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.

This is the first time that Akhilesh is not contesting a Lok Sabha general elections since he entered politics except the 2014 polls when he was Uttar Pradesh chief minister. He also has never lost any contest. He is currently the leader of opposition in UP Assembly and an MLA from Karhal assembly seat.

Out of 63 seats of its share under the SP-Congress alliance, Samajwadi Party has declared candidates on 60 seats. Fatehpur, Kaiserganj, and Robertsganj are the only seats where the SP has not declared candidates yet. The SP and Congress have distributed 63 and 17 seats respectively. Congress has declared candidates on 15 seats of its 17 seats. Congress names on Rae Bareli and Amethi are awaited.