Convicted ex-minister’s wife is SP’s choice for Amethi, Pawan Pandey from Ayodhya

UP elections 2022: SP’s second list for UP elections repeats Pawan Pandey on Ayodhya third time over; gives Amethi ticket to rape convict Gayatri Prasad Prajapati’s wife

LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Tuesday declared its second list of 36 candidates fielding its 2012 Ayodhya MLA Pawan Pandey for the third time from the Ayodhya seat. Pawan Pandey created history of sorts in the SP by winning the Ayodhya seat for the first time for the party in 2012 when he made his electoral debut. A close aide of Akhilesh, Pawan Pandey is also one of the Brahmin faces of the party.

UP elections 2022: Gayatri Prasad Prajapati was sentenced to life in November 2021 for gang-rape of a woman between 2015 and 2016 when he was Akhilesh Yadav’s mining minister in UP.

The SP has also fielded jailed former SP government minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati’s wife Maharaji Prajapati on Amethi assembly seat. Gayatri Prajapati is serving life imprisonment after he was convicted in a gang-rape case in November last year. Gayatri Prajapati won the Amethi seat for the first time in 2012 but lost it in 2017 to the BJP. This will be his wife’s first election.

Another highlight of the second list is Rakesh Pratap Singh who, in a dramatic move in October last year, resigned from the assembly, saying he wasn’t able to his promises to the people because of the non-cooperation of the state’s BJP government. Rakesh Pratap Singh flagged stalled plans to construct two roads in his constituency, Gauriganj (Amethi), as examples of the BJP’s approach and went on an indefinite hunger strike at the main crossing in Lucknow, Hazratganj, from where the police forcibly admitted him to a hospital when his health condition deteriorated a week later.

With this list, the SP has so far named 233 candidates - the SP on 198 seats, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on 33, and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) one each.

The second list has only one Muslim, Yasar Shah who is among the rare SP MLAs to have won both 2012 and 2017 elections on Matera constituency of Bahraich district. But this time, the party fielded him on Bahraich assembly seat which his farther Waqar Ahmed Shah represented from 1993 to 2017. The second list, which has eight women, has seven candidates from non-Yadav other backward class (OBC) and five Brahmins.