Samajwadi Party names Phulpur, Allahabad candidates

The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Saturday announced its candidates for the Phulpur and Allahabad parliamentary constituencies in Uttar Pradesh for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The SP has fielded Pandhari Yadav from Phulpur, a constituency which came into prominence after being represented by the nation's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru until his death in 1964. 

Yadav is contesting the seat against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Kesari Devi Patel and the Congress's Pankaj Niranjan. 

From Allahabad, the SP has fielded Rajendra Singh Patel.

Last month, BJP MP from Allahabad Shyama Charan Gupta had resigned from the party and joined the Samajwadi Party and is its Banda candidate. 

The BJP has fielded Rita Bahuguna Joshi from Allahabad, a seat her father Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna lost to megastar Amitabh Bachchan in 1984. 

Joshi had left the Congress and joined the BJP before the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. 

The SP, which won five seats in the 2014 elections, is contesting this general election in alliance with Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).

The SP is contesting 37, BSP 38 and the RLD three seats in the state. The SP-BSP-RLD alliance has left the two seats of Amethi and Rae Bareli for the Congress. IANS