For the upcoming UP assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has announced its candidates for 14 of the 22 seats of Prayagraj region comprising the districts of Prayagraj, Pratapgarh and Kaushambi. The Akhilesh Yadav led SP has declared names of eight candidates from different seats of Prayagraj along with four assembly seats of Pratapgarh and two seats of Kaushambi district.
SP, which has fielded six candidates from backward castes in its list for the region, is expected to open its cards for other assembly constituencies of the three districts in the coming days. In all, there are 22 seats in these three districts including 12 of Prayagraj, seven of Pratapgarh and three of Kaushambi.
UP elections are scheduled to be held in seven phases from February 10 to March 7 for all the 403 seats of the UP legislative assembly with the three districts of Prayagraj, Pratapgarh and Kaushambi witnessing polling under the fifth phase on February 27. The counting of the votes and the results are to be declared on March 10.
Of the names declared by SP for the eight seats of Prayagraj, Sandeep Yadav, a student leader and member of Samajwadi Chatra Sabha (SCS), has been given ticket from Allahabad North. The party has also decided to field Sandeep Patel from Meja seat, thereby trying to rope in votes of both Yadav and Patel communities.
Sandeep Yadav, a former student of CMP Degree College, has been active in SCS since his days as an undergraduate student. He has also contributed towards reinstating the students’ union on the campus of Allahabad University and its constituent colleges. Although he has not held any post in the students’ union at CMPDC but he hogged the limelight for his help to students and common man during the corona pandemic and floods which the city had witnessed in August last year.
{{/usCountry}}Sandeep Yadav, a former student of CMP Degree College, has been active in SCS since his days as an undergraduate student. He has also contributed towards reinstating the students’ union on the campus of Allahabad University and its constituent colleges. Although he has not held any post in the students’ union at CMPDC but he hogged the limelight for his help to students and common man during the corona pandemic and floods which the city had witnessed in August last year.
{{/usCountry}}“I am happy and honoured that my party has given me an opportunity and proved that the son of a modest Mali can also show his calibre. I am confident of winning because every common man is with me because I am one of them, not from any family of political legacy,” he said.
Similarly, MLA Hakim Lal Bind, who joined SP from BSP recently, has been made a candidate from his own seat of Handia. From Soraon reserved seat, SP has entered Geeta Pasi as the candidate in the poll fray. Former BSP MLA from Pratappur Mujtaba Siddiqui who has shifted his loyalties to SP will be the party’s candidate from Phulpur.
Likewise, the sitting MLA from Karchana, Ujjwal Raman Singh, has been given a ticket again by the SP. Ujjwal Raman Singh is the son of senior SP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Kunwar Rewati Raman Singh and enjoys fairly strong ground support. He won this seat in 2017 assembly election at a time when there was strong BJP wave in the district wherein BJP (and Apna dal as its alliance) won nine out of 12 assembly seats and just one seat was won by SP. BSP had won the remaining two.
“I don’t believe in propaganda and antics as practised by other parties. My family has always been with the voters of Karchana and wish that after winning I will fulfil the promises made to them,” said Ujjwal.
Likewise, SP has given a ticket to Ajay Munna from Bara reserved seat while from Koraon reserved seat, SP has decided to field Ramdev ‘Nidar’. Ramdev is originally a resident of Meja village of Koraon assembly constituency and has been a socialist worker since the beginning.
In Pratapgarh, SP has decided to field former MLA Ram Singh Patel, nephew of slain bandit gangster Dadua from Patti assembly constituency for the third time. He had won the seat in 2012 but lost in 2017 to former minister Rajendra Pratap Singh aka Moti Singh. Vinod Dubey has been made the candidate from Raniganj seat. Last time in 2017, former minister Shivakant Ojha was fielded.
For the first time after three elections from Kunda seat, SP has fielded a candidate, Gulshan Yadav, who was earlier in the camp of former UP minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiya who now heads his Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) party. Likewise, Grijesh would be SP candidate from Babaganj seat.
SP has also bet on Indrajeet Saroj from Manjhanpur seat of Kaushambi. A two-time cabinet minister and three-time MLA Saroj is currently the state general secretary of SP who lost the 2017 polls to BJP’s Lal Bahadur while contesting as a BSP candidate.
The party has also fielded MLA Pooja Pal from the Chail seat of Kaushambi this time. Pooja Pal, after the murder of her husband and then BSP’s sitting MLA from Allahabad West seat Raju Pal on January 25, 2005, had entered politics and fought from her husband’s seat in 2005 by-polls but lost. However, in 2007 elections as a BSP candidate at the age of 27 she had bagged the Allahabad West seat. After that, in the 2012 elections too, she had defeated Mafioso-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed to get elected from her husband’s seat. But, in 2017 she lost the elections from Allahabad west polling third. Recently she had shifted to the SP.