UP Assembly elections: Why Akhilesh Yadav may contest polls from Karhal constituency

With the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections around the corner, each political party is ensuring they leave no stone unturned to turn the tide in their favour. And in that vein, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav may contest the polls from Karhal constituency in Mainpuri district.

Earlier, there were speculations about Akhilesh Yadav may contest from the Gopalpur assembly seat of Azamgarh.

समाजवादी पार्टी प्रमुख अखिलेश यादव मैनपुरी के करहल विधानसभा क्षेत्र से चुनाव लड़ेंगे: सूत्र#UPAssemblyElections2022

— ANI_HindiNews (@AHindinews) January 20, 2022

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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