Dimple Yadav: Samajwadi Party's "Unopposed" Candidate (image@dimpleyadav)

Samajwadi party made a surprising move by announcing its 16 candidates for Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha election on Tuesday. Dimple Yadav, will run from Mainpuri. Dimple Yadav is the wife of Samajwadi Part President and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akilesh Yadav. Before serving as MP from Mainpuri, Yadav served as MP from UP’s Kannauj.

Dimple Yadav has contested for Firozabad Lok Sabha constituency in the 2009 by-election against actor turned politician Raj Babbar. She failed to secure seat in that election, but her husband won a seat in the Kannauj constituency. In 2012, Yadav was elected unopposed to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj as her husband left the seat to enter the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, and called for a by-election.

During the 2014general election, Yadav retained her Kannauj Lok Sabha seat by defeating her rival with 19,907 votes. During the 2019 general election, Dimple Yadav contested as a joint candidate of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, but lost to BJP’s Subrata Pathak by the margin of around 10,000 votes.

After the death of her father-in-law, Mulayam Singh Yadav, she was fielded from the vacant Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, which she won by defeating a BJP candidate over the margin of 2.8 lakh votes.

Recently, Yadav grabbed headlines as she asked the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman to consider a reduction in GST (Goods and Service Tax) on breast cancer drugs from the existing 12 percent to 5 percent. Taking to her X (formerly Twitter), Dimple Yadav, who is also a prominent socialist leader, said that “breast cancer is the most common type of cancer globally and India ranks highest in the breast cancer deaths”.