It’s official. Ms Dimple Yadav, wife of UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will contest the byelection on the Kannauj parliamentary seat, as a Samajwadi Party candidate. The election on this seat is scheduled to be held on June 24.
The Kannauj seat had recently been vacated by Mr Akhilesh Yadav who is now UP chief minister and member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council.
Announcing this after a meeting of the central parliamentary board of the party on Saturday morning, senior SP leader Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav said that party workers from Kannauj had been visiting the party office on a daily basis demanding that Dimple should contest the seat vacated by her husband.
“No party can defy the wishes of its party workers. If we did so, then the party workers would not have worked for any other candidate,” the SP leader said.
When asked if Dimple’s candidature would not fuel charges of dynastic rule in the Samajwadi Party, Prof Yadav said, “Other party have no other charges against us and they should also do some introspection on this issue.”
This will be Dimple Yadav’s second attempt at entering the Lok Sabha. She had unsuccessfully contested the Ferozabad by-elections in 2009 when Akhilesh Yadav had vacated the seat.
Dimple had lost the elections to Raj Babbar of Congress and the defeat had come as a major shock to the first family of Uttar Pradesh.
This time, however, Dimple’s victory in Kannauj is certain and it is this confidence that has encouraged her to make another attempt at contesting polls.