Up and running for 2027 polls, SP starts shortlisting candidates

Party Keeps Window Open For ‘Fence Sitters’ TooPervez.IqbalSiddiquiLucknow: Tracing the 2024 Lok Sabha poll template, Samajwadi Party is up and running with preparations for assembly polls due in early 2027. To begin with, the leadership has already held crucial deliberations with organisational office bearers for shortlisting candidates on 150 seats in around 35 districts.The second phase of the district-level meetings is scheduled to resume shortly and the entire exercise to shortlist candidates will conclude by July first week. Though most of the process for shortlisting of candidates is identical to what the party had adopted for 2024 LS polls, party strategists have introduced a new segment for ‘fence sitters’ to accommodate turncoats from BJP, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party and the like.Organisational office bearers at the district level, who have informed the party leadership about feelers from ‘fence sitters’, have been asked to shortlist such individuals and assess their individual winnability.A case in point is that of SBSP’s Mau MLA Abbas Ansari. His office in Mau has already put out banners of SP. The list also includes some SP members who did not tow the party line in the recent past and now have strained relations with the party. SP functionaries, however, maintain a studied silence on how the leadership was handling the “traditional Congress seats” in terms of shortlisting of candidates.Sources said the party has already shortlisted candidates for the “sure shot” SP seats which the party has won in consecutive elections and also the ones where it has not won in the recent past. “In around 24 districts, organisational officer bearers have been tasked to get some specific exercises done to help shortlist candidates.SP functionaries associated with the shortlisting of candidates said some organisational office bearers, who want to contest the assembly polls, have resigned from their post after party president Akhilesh Yadav announced that it was mandatory for such aspirants to relinquish the party position before their candidature could be considered.While SP president of Kanpur Nagar (Rural), Munindra Shukla, confirmed he has quit his post as he is seeking ticket from Bithoor – which SP has won since 2012 assembly polls, there were reports that two other office bearers have expressed their desire to contest polls and were likely to move their resignations soon.While reports said that Banda district president, Madhusudhan Kushwaha, too, had resigned from his post to contest polls, he dismissed it while talking to TOI. “Some people had forged a letterhead and issued a fake resignation letter more than a month ago. I had lodged a police complaint against this,” he told TOI. Similarly, a party functionary in Aligarh had named “officiating” office bearers on his post to explore his luck in getting a party ticket. Since the move was against the party norms, the individual was asked to recall all such appointees.