Heralding another son-rise, the Samajwadi Party, as anticipated, on Sunday replaced Shivpal Yadav with his son Aditya Yadav as the party candidate for the Budaun Lok Sabha seat.
The replacement was on the cards with Shivpal Yadav having dropped enough hints about the same earlier this month.
On April 2, in the presence of Shivpal Yadav and the SP’s Azamgarh candidate Dharmendra Yadav, the local party unit passed a proposal at a workers’ conference for making Aditya the candidate from Budaun.
Soon after, Shivpal had said: “The workers’ conference here (in Budaun) today passed the proposal (for Aditya as the candidate). The proposal will now go to the national leadership...The national leadership is likely to give its nod.”
Ahead of the workers’ conference, Shivpal had conveyed to Akhilesh that he would prefer his son to contest the seat to launch him in politics.
The party’s original plan was to make Aditya contest the Jaswant Nagar assembly bypoll if Shivpal won the Budaun Lok Sabha seat. However, Shivpal intends to stay on as Jaswant Nagar MLA, having won the seat seven times in a row since 1996.
Budaun will go to polls in the third phase on May 7. The nomination process began on April 12 and will end on April 19.
{{/usCountry}}Budaun will go to polls in the third phase on May 7. The nomination process began on April 12 and will end on April 19.
{{/usCountry}}The most prominent political son in the SP is party chief Akhilesh Yadav, whose father the late Mulayam Singh Yadav was the party founder and a three-time former Uttar Pradesh chief minister. Others include former Firozabad MP Akshaya Yadav, son of the SP chief national general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, former Budaun MP Dharmendra Yadav, son of Mulayam’s brother Abhay Ram Yadav, and former Mainpuri MP Tej Pratap Yadav, son of the late Saifai block pramukha Ranvir Singh Yadav.