Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav filed his nomination papers on Thursday from the Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh. He was accompanied by Samajwadi Party MP Ramgopal Yadav.

Akhilesh served as Lok Sabha MP from 2000-2012. He resigned from the Kannauj parliamentary seat in 2012 after SP won the assembly election.

He resigned as Chief Minister after the SP lost the state election in 2017. In 2019, Akhilesh successfully contested the Lok Sabha polls from Azamgarh.

However, after winning a seat in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Akhilesh resigned as Lok Sabha MP and retained his state assembly seat.

Voting on the Kannauj seat will be held in the fourth phase of the Lok Sabha election on May 13.

Earlier, the Samajwadi Party had announced Tej Pratap Yadav, Akhilesh’s nephew and son-in-law of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, as its candidate from Kannauj.

As per the seat-sharing agreement between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is contesting on 17 seats, while the Samajwadi Party has fielded candidates on the remaining 63 seats.

In the 2019 general elections, the BJP emerged triumphant, securing 62 out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Its ally Apna Dal (S) clinched two seats. Mayawati’s BSP managed to secure 10 seats, while Akhilesh Yadav’s SP garnered five. The Congress party was relegated to just one seat.

(Inputs from ANI)