Akhilesh denies ticket to Aparna, fields ex-armyman

LUCKNOW: Denying a ticket to Aparna Yadav, Samajwadi Party (SP) has declared a former army officer Major Ashish Chaturvedi as its candidate from the Lucknow Cantt assembly for the bypoll.

The younger daughter-in-law of party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav had contested from the same seat in the 2017 UP assembly polls as the SP candidate but lost to BJP’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi. The seat fell vacant following Rita Bahuguna Joshi’s victory from the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat in May 2019. In 2017 polls, Aparna Yadav had secured 61,606 votes against the winner’s 95,402 votes.

Aparna is known for not toeing the party line. She has praised PM Narendra Modi on a couple of occasions and had also been meeting the CM. She is said to be close to Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L) chief Shivpal Yadav, who formed his own party ahead of the 2019 LS polls after a prolonged political feud with his nephew and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.

The SP did not field her from any seat in the Lok Sabha elections against the speculations those days. For Govindnagar, SP declared Samrat Vikas as its candidate. With this, SP has declared candidates on four of the eleven Assembly bypolls seats. From Balah (Bahriach) it has fielded Kiran Bharati and on Gangoh (Saharanpur) Chaudhary Indrasen is its candidate. The party will

declare the remaining candidates soon. At a press conference last Friday, when asked about speculations on Aparna Yadav joining BJP to contest elections, Akhilesh said: "Anyone in the family can go anywhere. We have loktantra (democracy) in our family."

Major Ashish Chaturvedi, 44, who took premature retirement from the army in 2006, is from Lucknow. He is the president of UP wing of Ex-servicemen Federation of India.

He joined the Samajwadi Party just a few days back, he said, adding that the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav offered him to contest the Lucknow Cantonment bypolls.