UP elections 2017: Amid alliance talks, SP names candidate for seat held by Congress

Amid talks of a possible alliance with Congress in Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Samajwadi Party has announced its candidate for Kidwai Nagar seat where the incumbent is a Congress MLA, thus raising some eyebrows. In its first list of 191 candidates, Samajwadi Party has named Omprakash Mishra for the Kidwai Nagar seat. Congress' Ajay Kapoor was elected from this seat in the 2012 Assembly elections.

For the key Kanpur Cantonment seat, SP has named Hassan Rumi as the party candidate. In the last state polls, Rumi had lost to BJP's Raghunandan Bhadauria by over 9,000 votes. Mafia-turned-politician Atiq Ahmad, who was declared Samajwadi Party candidate from this seat in the list released by then state president Shivpal Yadav, had said on Thursday he would not contest polls.

Interestingly, even though Kanpur Cantt is a Muslim majority constituency, no candidate belonging to the community has won from that seat. Although BSP and SP has fielded Muslim candidates, BJP is relying on Bhadoria, the incumbent MLA, for the second time. Congress has not announced its candidate for this seat yet.

For Kalyanpur, Sishamau and Bithur seats, the party is keeping its faith on its last time winners Satish Nigam, Irfaan Solanki and Munindra Shukla respectively. For Aryanagar seat, which is at the Centre of this city, the party this time has named Amitabh Bajpai, who is a resident of Kanpur rural area.