Samajwadi Party names Amar Singh, Beni Verma for RS polls

Lucknow: Mr Amar Singh and Mr Beni Prasad Varma will the Samajwadi Party’s candidate for the upcoming biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha. Mr Beni Varma had returned to the Samajwadi Party from the Congress less than a week ago and Mr Amar Singh’s six year expulsion from the party ended in January this year.

Announcing this at a press conference here on Tuesday, senior party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav said that the central parliamentary board of the party which met here on Tuesday morning had authorised the party president Mulayam Singh Yadav to take the final decision about the names.

He said that other names finalised for Rajya Sabha were Mr Reoti Rama Singh, Mr Sukhram Singh Yadav, Mr Vishambhar Nishad, Mr Arvind Singh and Mr Sanjay Seth.

Mr Sanjay Seth is a controversial builder from Lucknow whose name had been rejected by the UP Governor when the party had included his name for nomination to the Uttar Pradesh legislative council.

According to party sources, the candidature of Mr Amar Singh was strongly opposed by Professor Ram Gopal Yadav and Mohd Azam Khan but the two leaders later left the decision to Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Mr Shivpal Singh Yadav, however, denied that there was any opposition to any name and said that the entire parliamentary board supported the party president’s decision. Mr Shivpal Singh Yadav also declared the party’s official candidates for the UP legislative Council.

The legislative Council’s names include Mr Balram Yadav, Mr Shatrudh Prakash, Mr Jagjivan Prasad, Mr Ram Sundar Das, Mr Yeshwant Singh, Mr Kamlesh Pathak, Mr Bukkal Nawab and Mr Ranvijay Singh.

BSP likely to change its candidates-in-waiting
The proverbial sword in now dangling over the heads of the candidates-in-waiting for the assembly polls in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). BSP president Mayawati has convened a meeting of all party MLAs and coordinators in Delhi on May 20 to take stock of the situation.

She will make a seat-to-seat assessment of the progress made by party candidates and those who have failed to make an impact in their constituencies will be replaced. The BSP, it may be recalled, had finalised candidates for over 300 seats in UP in 2014, immediately after the Lok Sabah elections.

Candidates on the remaining seats were cleared in 2015 and almost all candidates have already campaigned in their respective constituencies for over a year now even though the party has not made their names official as yet.

“This is the right time to review each seat because if the candidate has failed to connect with the voters till now, chances are that he will not be able to do so in the next few months,” said a party functionary.