UP civic polls: Akhilesh-Shivpal to campaign together

For the first time since 2016, walls have been demolished and bridges have been built as Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav will now campaign together for the upcoming municipal elections in Uttar Pradesh.

The party is likely to announce the campaign schedule of its top leaders soon.

It has already announced that Akhilesh Yadav and Mainpuri MP Dimple Yadav will hold three public meetings each for the party's Lucknow mayoral candidate Vandana Mishra.

While Akhilesh Yadav is still busy strategizing, Shivpal Yadav has taken to the field, travelling across the Yadav strongholds of Etawah, Mainpuri and Firozabad. Shivpal will campaign in these districts with Akhilesh.

Before the Yadav family feud surfaced in 2016-17, the last time the Shivpal Yadav campaigned for the party was in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The subsequent feud eventually led to a split between Akhilesh and Shivpal.

When Shivpal allied his Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia with the SP in the 2022 Assembly polls, he had only campaigned with Akhilesh for the latter's Karhal assembly seat.

Then in December 2022, Shivpal campaigned with Akhilesh for Dimple Yadav's Mainpuri Lok Sabha by-poll contest. Thereafter, Shivpal re-joined the SP, just a month after party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav's death on October 10.

Akhilesh is now leading the party campaign strategy by forming teams for the party's mayoral, nagar palika chairperson and nagar panchayat chairperson candidates.

Shivpal will lead the SP campaign in the BJP strongholds. Akhilesh and Shivpal will be seen together in SP strongholds of Mainpuri, Kannauj, Etawah and Firozabad.

Dimple Yadav is likely to campaign for the party candidates in her Lok Sabha constituency Mainpuri.

Akhilesh will also campaign for SP and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidates in western Uttar Pradesh areas along with RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary.

The SP has declared its resolve to contest the urban local bodies' polls in the state full throttle.

Elections for nagar nigams, Nagar palika parishads and nagar panchayats will be held in two phases, on May 4 and 11. The counting will be done on May 13.

The voting in the first phase will be held in 37 districts under nine divisions (Saharanpur, Moradabad, Agra, Jhansi, Prayagraj, Lucknow, Devipatan, Gorakhpur and Varanasi) on May 4.