UP bypoll: Samajwadi Party releases list of candidates for six seats

A day after the declaration of Assembly poll results of Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, Samajwadi Party on Wednesday released a list of its candidates for six of 10 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, where the byelections are due later this year.

Reacting to the list, BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said it was the effect of the Haryana election results, with the SP “showing the Congress its place” by declaring candidates on the seats claimed by the latter.

The SP, which is a part of the INDIA bloc, says it will contest the byelections with the Congress, which is demanding five seats from the party. The Congress did not share any seat with the SP in the recently held Haryana Assembly elections, in which the BJP stunned the Opposition with a victory, pocketing 48 of the 90 seats.

According to the list, the SP has fielded Tej Pratap Yadav from Karhal, Naseem Solanki from the Sisamu seat, Mustafa Siddiqui from Phulpur (Prayagraj) and Ajit Prasad from Milkipur (Ayodhya). Shobhawai Verma and Jyodi Bind have been given party tickets from the Katehari and Majhwan seats, respectively.

Among the SP candidates, Naseem Solanki is the wife of jailed party leader Irfan Solanki, while Shobhawati Verma is the wife of party MP Lalji Verma and Ajit Prasad is the son of Faizabad (Ayodhya) MP Awadhesh Prasad. Jyoti Bind is the daughter of party leader Ramesh Bind, who lost to Apna Dal (S) candidate Anupriya Patel in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Mirzapur.

The byelections are set to be held in 10 Assembly seats of the state — Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar), Karhal (Mainpuri), Milkipur (Ayodhya), Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar), Ghaziabad, Majhawan (Mirzapur), Sisamau (Kanpur city), Khair (Aligarh), Phulpur (Prayagraj) and Kundarki (Moradabad). The official date for elections is yet to be announced by the Election Commission.

Nine of these seats fell vacant after its MLAs were elected as MPs in the Lok Sabha elections, while in Sisamau, the byelections are being held due to the disqualification of SP MLA Irfan Solanki, who was convicted in a criminal case.

Earlier on Sunday, Congress's Uttar Pradesh unit president Ajay Rai said the state wing had given a proposal to its leadership to contest on five of the 10 bypoll-bound Assembly seats in the state. “We have given a proposal to contest on five Assembly seats — Majhwa (Mirzapur), Phulpur (Allahabad), Ghaziabad, Khair (Aligarh) and Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar) to our leadership. These seats are those, where BJP candidates had won,” Rai said.

Asked about the bypoll ticket distribution, SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary on Wednesday said the seat sharing with the Congress would be decided by his party's national president, Akhilesh Yadav.

Meanwhile, buoyed by the Haryana poll results, the BJP here took a dig at the announcement of SP candidates for the byelections. Party spokesperson Tripathi said the SP-Congress alliance was in a state of “disarray”.

In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly poll, Sisamau, Katehari, Karhal, Milkipur and Kundarki were held by the SP, while the BJP had won the last elections in Phulpur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan and Kahir. The Meerapur seat was won by the RLD, which was then an ally of the SP.