Akhilesh Yadav to fight UP Assembly polls for first time, will contest from stronghold Karhal

It’s official! Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav will contest in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election for the first time. The party said that he will be contesting from the Karhal constituency in the Mainpuri district. The district has traditionally been an SP stronghold.

This comes days after there were speculations that Akhilesh would contest from the Gopalpur seat in Azamgarh district.

Announcing the decision, the SP chief promised to make Lucknow the IT hub and create 22 lakh jobs for the youths in the sector.

Reacting to Akhilesh Yadav’s candidature, the BJP said it’s a “misconception" of the SP chief that Mainpuri is a “safe seat" for him. “And we will clear it (the alleged misconception)," BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi was reported by News18 as saying.

Akhilesh, who is an MP from the Azamgarh seat, had earlier said that he would decide on contesting the Uttar Pradesh polls after talking to the people of his parliamentary constituency. Voting in Karhal will be held on 20 February.

One must note that Akhilesh Yadav, the Lok Sabha MP from Azamgarh constituency, has never contested a state election. When he became the Uttar Pradesh chief minister in 2012, he took the Legislative Council route.

Take a look at the Karhal constituency, which will go to the polls on 20 February.

• Karhal is one of the five Assembly segments in Mainpuri, the constituency that Akhilesh Yadav’s father and Samajwadi patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav represented in Parliament five times.

• At present, Sobaran Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party is the Karhal MLA. In 2017, he bagged the seat with 1,04,221 while his closest competitor, Rama Shakya of the BJP, bagged 65,816 votes. The SP has won this seat seven times since 1993. In the 2002 election, the BJP had bagged Karhal.

• The constituency is situated 4 km from Saifai — the native village of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. He, and most members of the family have studied at Karhal’s Jain Intercollege.

• According to the data available, of Karhal’s 3.7 lakh electorate, 1.4 lakh voters (37 per cent) are Yadavs, 34,000 are Shakhyas (OBCs) and around 14,000 are Muslims.

• Owing to the caste make-up and the fact that the constituency has been pro-SP, Karhal is seen to be one of the safest options for Akhilesh Yadav.

UP Polls

The Uttar Pradesh 2022 polls will be held in seven phases starting from 10 February. The counting of votes will take place on 10 March.

The 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh were also held in seven phases and the BJP and its allies came out of the elections as the ultimate winner, bagging 312 of the states’ 403 Assembly constituencies.

This election is likely to witness a four-cornered fight between the ruling BJP, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, the Congress and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party.

With inputs from agencies

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