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The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday named former MP Tej Pratap Singh Yadav as the candidate from the Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
Mr. Yadav, 36, is the nephew of party president Akhilesh Yadav and son-in-law of former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad.
Monday’s announcement puts to rest speculation that the SP president might contest from the seat.
Mr. Tej Pratap represented the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency in 2014, after late Mulayam Singh Yadav, the SP founder, won Azamgarh as well as Mainpuri Lok Sabha seats and decided to retain Azamgarh.
Five members of the Mulayam family are contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Apart from Tej Pratap, the other candidates are Dharmendra Yadav from Azamgarh, Dimple Yadav from Mainpuri, Akshay Yadav from Firozabad and Aditya Yadav from Badaun.
The Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency remained the bastion of the SP for long with the party winning the seat each time since 1999. However, in 2019, the BJP’s Subrat Pathak won the seat by less than 13,000 votes defeating SP nominee Dimple Yadav.
The SP also declared the candidature of Sanatan Pandey from Ballia against the BJP’s Neeraj Shekhar. Mr. Pandey contested from the seat in 2019 on SP ticket but lost to the BJP’s Virendra Singh Mast.
