Mulayam’s younger daughter-in-law may contest by-poll from Lucknow Cantt assembly seat
Samajwadi Party (SP) chief patron Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav is likely to contest from the Lucknow Cantonment assembly seat yet again, say sources close to her. Lucknow Cantt is among the 13 assembly constituencies that will go to bypolls soon.
Aparna Yadav had contested the seat in 2017 UP assembly polls as the SP candidate but lost to the BJP’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi. The seat fell vacant after Joshi quit her membership of the assembly on bagging the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat in May.
“The Lucknow Cantt seat is close to my heart,” said Aparna Yadav and excused herself from making any further comments.
It’s not clear yet if the Samajwadi Party will field her, or she would contest as an independent or move to some other party. Her shifting to BJP has been speculated for quite long. Recently, three Rajya Sabha members of the SP quit the party and joined the BJP. One of them, Neeraj Shekhar, has already been elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha as a BJP member. Sanjay Seth and Surendra Singh Nagar have been named BJP candidates for the elections to the seats that fell vacant following their resignations.
In 2017 polls, Aparna Yadav had secured 61,606 votes against the winner’s 95,402 votes.
Aparna is known for not toeing the party line all the time. She had on a couple of occasions praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and had also been meeting chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
She is said to be close to Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L) chief Shivpal Yadav, who formed his own party ahead of the 2019 LS polls after a prolonged political feud with his nephew and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. The SP did not field her from any seat in the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP, ahead of the 2017 polls, had inducted Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the then sitting Congress MLA from Lucknow Cantonment, into its fold and gave her the ticket to recontest the seat.
