UP elections: Shivpal Yadav features in SP's new list of star campaigners

New Delhi, Feb 21: In the latest list of star campaigners for the next phase of elections, the Samajwadi Party has named its former member and Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohiya) chief Shivpal Singh as one of the persons seeking vote for the alliance.

It is seen as an indication of the closing of ranks within the Mulayam Singh Yadav clan as Shivpal's name was missing in the earlier list. The SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, who campaigned for his son in the Karhal constituency, will continue to lead the campaigning for the party in the remaining phases of the seven-phased polls, sources within the alliance parties informed news agency ANI.

Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Dimple Yadav, Ram Gopal Yadav, Kiranmoy Nanda, and Swami Prasad Maurya, who had left the BJP to join the SP weeks ahead of the polls, are the other prominent names in the new list.

PM Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders had taken potshots at the SP for fielding the party patriarch on the campaign trail in the Karhal constituency. "They (the SP) are about to lose the seat (Karhal) that they were considering safest. It is getting out of their hands. You must have seen the father (Mulayam Singh Yadav), who was earlier pushed away from the stage, humiliated and his party captured, had to plead to save his son from a certain defeat", PM Modi had said during an election rally in Unnao.

Meanwhile, phase three of the seven-phase elections in UP was completed yesterday with over provisional voter turnout of 64.3 per cent in 59 assembly constituencies. The fourth phase of the UP elections will be held on 23 February.