Dimple Yadav, wife of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, today filed her nomination paper for by-election at Kannauj Lok Sabha seat.
After she filed her nomination papers, her chief minister Husband kicked-started the election campaign by addressing a rally. The bye-election has been necessitated as Yadav quit the Lok Sabha seat after becoming chief minister.
Dressed in a simple green sari, her hair tied back, her husband by her side, Dimple Yadav also addressed the rally. Like any politician about to contest an election, she reminded the gathering of their special connection. “I want to thank all of you…for many of you, I am ‘Bhabhi’ (sister-in-law)”, she said.
“We had not contested the seat in the 2009 Lok Sabha election and we are not contesting it now,” Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh said, adding that besides Kannauj, the party had not put up candidate then from Mainpuri from where Mulayam Singh had contested.
The last time Dimple Yadav had contested a Lok Sabha by-election, the Congress had fielded Samajwadi defector Raj Babbar to humiliate her by 85,000 votes. It had caused a churning in the regional party over Mulayam’s “dynastic tendency†in fielding the greenhorn Dimple and led to Amar Singh’s ouster.
Despite being an outside supporter of the government at the Centre, SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav’s presence at the UPA’s third anniversary dinner last month was reassuring for the Congress which had been plagued by frequent tantrums of some of its allies, especially Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
