BSP announces candidates for 16 Lok Sabha seats of UP

Lucknow: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Sunday announced its fourth list of candidates for 16 parliamentary constituencies of Uttar Pradesh.

BSP has fielded Afzal Ansari, brother of jailed strongman-politician Mukhtar Ansari from Ghazipur constituency. Afzal will contest opposite union minister and BJP leader Manoj Sinha.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Afzal had defeated Sinha.

Meanwhile, the BSP has fielded Chandrabhadra Singh from Sultanpur, Ashok Kumar Tripathi from Pratapgarh, Ritesh Pandey from Ambedkar Nagar, Ramasheromani Verma from Shravast, Aftab Aalam from Dumariyanganj, Ramprasad Chaudhary from Basti, and Bhishm Shankar from Santkabir Nagar among others.

BSP has also fielded Vinod Kumar Jaiswal from Deoria, Sadal Prasad from Baansgao, Sangeeta from Lalgunj, Atul Rai from Ghoshi, RS Kushwaha from Salempur, Shyam Singh Yadav from Jaunpur, T Ram from Machhali Shahar and Rangnath Mishra from Bhadoi.

There are 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh where SP, BSP, and RLD are contesting in an alliance. The SP will contest on 37 seats, BSP on 38 and RLD on 3 seats. The alliance has left two seats, Rae Bareli and Amethi, for the Congress.

Lok Sabha elections are being held from April 11 and will go on till May 19 in seven phases. The polls in Uttar Pradesh will be held in all seven phases.

Counting of votes will take place on May 23.