Virendra Singh Rawat / Lucknow
Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Monday filed his nomination from Karhal assembly seat in Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh,
Yadav, who is currently the Member of Parliament (MP) from Azamgarh, is seeking to make his debut in the UP legislative assembly with his nomination. He is the main challenger to chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
Karhal is slated to witness polls on February 20 in the third of total seven phase elections in UP. The assembly constituency is in the vicinity of Saifai village in Etawah district, the native place of the Yadav clan.
Yadav’s father and SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav represents Mainpuri parliamentary constituency in Lok Sabha.
Interestingly, Adityanath, who is currently the member of the UP legislative council or Upper House, will also try his luck from Gorakhpur Urban assembly constituency for the first time.
Both Yadav and Adityanath have either been the members of the Lok Sabha or UP legislative council so far.
According to the Election Commission, Karhal comprises about 370,000 electorates, including nearly 140,000 Yadavs; 34,000 Shakhyas, both other backward castes (OBCs); and around 14,000 Muslims.
Meanwhile, union minister and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader S P Singh Baghel has also filed his nomination papers from Karhal, thus giving the prospective contest an interesting proposition.
UP assembly elections, concurrently with Uttarakhand, Manipur, Punjab and Goa assemblies, would be held in seven rounds in Feb and March 2022 viz. Feb 10, 14, 20, 23, 27 and March 3 and 7.
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Before filing his nomination, Yadav observed the 202 UP polls would scrip a new history for India even as he exhorted people to defeat the negative narrative in politics. He underlined he was striving for ushering in a positive template of politics with progressive discourse.