Akhilesh Yadav may have to enter Lok Sabha fray to secure Kannauj

KANNAUJ: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav may contest the 2019 general election from Kannauj, the seat held by his wife Dimple Yadav, amid the BJP’s plans to aggressively target all five Lok Sabha seats held by the party it dislodged from power in the state polls last year.
Yadav had announced last month that his wife would not contest the next general election, a move aimed at quelling allegations of promoting “dynasty” in the party.
A senior SP functionary said that Yadav, the party’s national president, will “in all probability” contest from Kannauj in 2019 to retain the family bastion and enter the Lok Sabha. “This will be a shot in the arm for the party after the loss in 2017 polls and help it make a mark in the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh,” the party functionary told ET, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kannauj could, however, pose a big test for Yadav in the present scenario. In last year’s assembly election, SP had lost two of the three seats in the Lok Sabha constituency to the BJP while it won the Kannauj city seat by barely 2,000 votes. To make matters worse, SP lost all the three nagar palika chairman seats and all five nagar panchayat chairman seats in Kannauj in the recent civic polls. “Agar bhabhi nahin to bhaiya ko maidan mein utarna hi padega (If Dimple does not contest, Akhilesh will have to rise to the challenge,” said Ramesh Yadav, a local shopkeeper in Kannauj.

Dimple Yadav had beaten the BJP candidate in 2014 by just 20,000 votes. Earlier, however, Akhilesh Yadav represented Kannauj thrice in the Lok Sabha, before he relinquished the seat after becoming chief minister in 2012.

SP has more worries as the party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has declared that he will not contest from his seat of Azamgarh in 2019 but Mainpuri. He had contested from both seats in 2014, winning both, and later relinquished Mainpuri, which was won in a by-poll by his grandson, Tej Pratap Yadav. “With the BJP targeting the Azamgarh seat, we will float a strong candidate from there too,” said a senior SP leader.

Firozabad and Badaun are two other seats that SP won in 2014 but where the party did not fare well in the recent civic polls.