Lok Sabha elections 2024: The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Tuesday (February 20) declared its third list of five candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh. The Akhilesh Yadav party has also revealed the candidate for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat, currently represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Samajwadi Party has fielded Surendra Singh Patel (64) from Varanasi Lok Sabha seat.
Apart from Patel, the other candidates on the list are senior leader Shivpal Yadav from Budaun parliamentary constituency, Iqra Hasan from Kairana, Praveen Singh Aron from Bareilly and Ajendra Singh Rajput from Hamirpur.
Shivpal Yadav, the uncle of party chief Akhilesh Yadav, is an MLA from the Jaswantnagar assembly constituency in Etawah district. Earlier, in its first list, the party had fielded Dharmendra Yadav, the son of party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav's younger brother Abhay Ram Yadav, from Budaun.
With this list, the Samajwadi Party has so far declared the names of 31 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls in UP.
Who is Surendra Singh Patel?
Patel, the candidate nominated for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat, has a political career spanning over four decades. He hails from Rajatalab in the Rohania assembly constituency of Varanasi.
Surendra Singh Patel previously served as the Member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly representing the Sevapuri assembly constituency from 2012 to 2017. During his tenure, he held the position of Minister of State for Public Works and Irrigation in the Akhilesh Yadav-led government.
Sevapuri is one of the 403 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly Constituencies that comes under the Varanasi district. In 2022, Neelratan Singh Patel of the Bharatiya Janata Party won the seat by defeating Surendra Singh Patel of the Samajwadi Party with a margin of 22531 votes.
His primary occupation is agriculture. Patel has served as a minister in the Samajwadi Party government on two occasions. Prior to his association with the SP, he held a ministerial position as an independent charge minister in the Bahujan Samaj Party government. Known for his amiable personality, Patel enjoys a distinct identity in the region. In the month of January, SP had made him in-charge of Varanasi Lok Sabha seat.
What happened in 2019 Lok Sabha elections?
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, PM Narendra Modi won the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh by a margin of 4,79,505 votes by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party. PM Narendra Modi polled 6,74,664 votes, while his nearest rival Samajwadi Party candidate polled 1,95,159 votes.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Modi secured an impressive 56.37 per cent vote share, marking a significant increase of 25.85 percentage points in favor of the BJP compared to the 2009 elections. In 2009, party veteran Murali Manohar Joshi had won with a vote share of 30.5 per cent.
Shalini Yadav is the daughter-in-law of Shyamlal Yadav, who was elected as an MP from Varanasi in 1984.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendar Modi had defeated Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal by a margin of 3.37 lakh votes in Varanasi. Kejriwal, who had contested as AAP nominee in 2014, managed to get 2 lakh votes.
