UP Polls: SP-RLD Alliance Announces First List of Candidates

The Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (SP-RLD) alliance on Thursday, 13 January, made public their first list of candidates for the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The alliance has announced 29 candidates, with SP contesting in 10 seats and RLD contesting in 19.

All the candidates are contesting in seats in Western UP, the polling for which will take place in the first phase of the elections, on 10 February.

Polling will be carried out in UP in a total of seven phases, and the result will be declared on 10 March.

THE SAMAJWADI PARTY CANDIDATES

The 10 candidates fielded by SP are:

• Kunwar Singh from Agra Cantt

• Madhusudan Sharma from Bah

• Amarpal Sharma from Sahibabad

• Aslam Chaudhary from Dhaulana

• Salman Saeed from Kol

• Zafar Alam from Aligarh

• Nahid Hassan from Kairana

• Pankaj Malik from Charthawal

• Shahid Manzoor from Kithaur

• Rafeeq Ansari from Meerut.

THE RLD CANDIDATES

Meanwhile, RLD has fielded:

• Pradeep Chaudhary (Guddu) from Sadabad

• Tejpal Singh from Chhata

• Pritam Singh from Govardhan

• Mahesh Kumar Jatav from Agra (Rural)

• Sikri Brijesh Chahar from Fatehpur

• Rautan Singh from Khairagarh

• Sudesh Sharma from Modinagar

• Madan Bhaiyya from Loni.

• Gajraj Singh from Hapur

• Avtar Singh Bhadana from Jewar

• Haji Yunus from Bulandshahr

• Dilnawaz Khan from Syana

• Bhagwati Prasad Suryavanshi from Khair

• Prasann Chudhary from Shamli

• Anil Kumar from Purqazi

• Rajpal Singh Saini from Khatauli

• Munshi Ram from Nahtaur

• Ahmad Hameed from Baghpat

• Babita Devi from Baldev

Babita Devi is, so far, the only woman candidate announced by the alliance.

IN THE RUN-UP TO POLLS...

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday, 13 January, released the party's first list of candidates for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. A total of 125 candidates were announced.

Out of the 125 candidates, 40 percent (50 candidates) were women, and 40 percent were youth leaders.

These included the Unnao rape victim’s mother, activist Sadaf Jafar from Lucknow Central, and ASHA worker Poonam Pandey from Shahjahanpur.

Meanwhile, BJP leader Swami Prasad Maurya is slated to join the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Friday. His resignation from the Yogi Adityanath-led government in the state has triggered a slew of exits from the BJP, including those figures that may be of consequence to the election.