2024 Lok Sabha polls: Samajwadi Party releases first list of 16 candidates, Dimple Yadav to contest from Mainpuri

The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Tuesday released its first list of 16 candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Dimple Yadav, the wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, will contest from Mainpuri. The SP, which is part of the INDIA bloc, is currently engaged in seat-sharing talks with Congress. Former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has offered 11 seats to Congress, which currently holds one seat in Uttar Pradesh. 

SP's first list of candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections

Sambhal: Shafiqur Rahman Barq
Firozabad: Akshay Yadav
Mainpur: Dimple Yadav
Eta: Devesh Shakya
Budaun: Dharmendra Yadav
Khiri: Utkarsh Verma
Dhaurahra: Anand Bhadauria
Unnao: Anu Tandon
Lucknow: Ravidas Mehrotra 
Farukhabad: Naval Kishore Shakya 
Akbarpur: Rajaram Pal
Banda: Shivshankar Singh Patel 
Faizabad: Avdesh Prasad 
Ambedkar Nagar: Lalji verma 
Basti: Ram Prasad Choudhary 
Gorakhpur: Kajal Nishad 

In Uttar Pradesh, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats, the contest is likely to be between the BJP and SP-Congress. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Mayawati has not allied with any party and will contest all seats. 

In the last 2019 elections, the BJP had won 62 seats with nearly 50 per cent votes while BSP bagged 10 and SP won 5. The SP and BSP had contested the last polls together.  Congress won the Gandhi family bastion Raebareli, where Sonia Gandhi defeated BJP's Dinesh Pratap Singh.