SP names Dimple Yadav as its candidate for Mainpuri byelection

The seat fell vacant after Mulayam Singh’s death in October

Samajwadi Party (SP) on Thursday announced the candidature of Dimple Yadav for the Mainpuri Parliamentary seat, which fell vacant after the demise of party’s founder Mulayam Singh Yadav. The byelection for the seat is scheduled on December 5.

“The Samajwadi Party declares Dimple Yadav as the candidate for the Mainpuri bypoll,” reads a release issued by the State president Naresh Uttam Patel. SP stalwart and three-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh passed away at the age of 82 on October 10 at the Medanta Hospital in Gurugram.

There are nearly 17 lakh voters in Mainpuri Parliamentary constituency out of which roughly 3.5 lakhs are Yadav voters. The second most numbered community in the constituency is Sakya (OBC) community, who have around three lakh voters. By making Dimple, the daughter-in-law of late Mulayam Singh and wife of party president Akhilesh Yadav a candidate, the SP is trying to benefit from the ‘sympathy’ factor in favour of the Yadav family. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, late Mulayam Singh won the seat by roughly 1,14,000 votes against Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Prem Singh Shakya who polled more than 4,30,000 votes. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who also served as the defence minister of India represented Mainpuri five times in the Lok Sabha.