After Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath threw his hat in the ring for the upcoming polls, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav may follow suit, sources said on Wednesday.
Sources told CNN-News18 that Akhilesh Yadav — Lok Sabha MP from Azamgarh — has decided to contest the Uttar Pradesh election from Gopalpur assembly seat in Azamgarh. He had earlier said he would not contest the polls and would prefer to focus on every seat in the state.
Sources said after Adityanath decided to contest the polls for the first time, the pressure was on the Samajwadi Party chief. Yogi Adityanath will contest from Gorakhpur Sadar in eastern UP and the BJP hopes to make strides in the region by fielding the UP chief minister, who is the head of the influential Gorakhpur Mutt.
Reports of Akhilesh Yadav contesting the election come as his sister-in-law Aparna Yadav is likely to join the BJP in Delhi, in a move seen as a tit-for-tat by the saffron party which lost several key backward caste leaders to the Samajwadi Party recently.
In November, Akhilesh Yadav had told reporters he would not contest the election. But his party rushed to clarify that such a decision had yet to be taken by the party.
“I will not be contesting the assembly election myself,” the Samajwadi MP had been quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
In 2012, when he led the Samajwadi Party to a big victory in UP, he took over as the country’s youngest Chief Minister at 38. He was a Lok Sabha MP from Kannauj at the time.
Later, he took the route of the state Legislative Council. His wife Dimple Yadav was elected unopposed from the seat he vacated, Kannauj.
The Samajwadi Party has been looking to strengthen its roots in the Purvanchal region by forging alliances with Om Prakash Rajbhar, Sanjay Chauhan among others. The party has so far been successful in roping in the son of influential Brahmin leader in Purvanchal, Hari Shankar Tiwari, and also brought Sigbatullah Ansari, brother of Mukhtar Ansari, to its camp.
The Purvanchal region of the state is gaining electoral importance as it is a common saying in the political corridors of UP that whoever wins Purvanchal, forms the government in the state. In 2017, the BJP won 106 out of 156 assembly seats in 26 districts, SP got 85 seats in 2012, and BSP got over 70 seats in 2007 – all from Purvanchal.
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