New Delhi: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, contesting his first assembly election from Karhal constituency in Mainpuri district, defetaed Union minister SP Singh Baghel of BJP by 67,504 votes.
Akhilesh Yadav is currently a Lok Sabha MP from Azamgarh.
Karhal is considered to be a Samajwadi Party bastion and since 1993, the SP has never lost the election here. The constituency forms part of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat.
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The BJP pitted Union minister of state SP Singh Baghel against Akhilesh in the high-profile seat. Except the Bahujan Samaj Party and the BJP, no other party has fielded candidates on this seat.
Karhal has about 3.7 lakh electorate, including 1.4 lakh (or 37 per cent) Yadavs, 34,000 Shakhyas (OBCs) and around 14,000 Muslims. The election result of Karhal Assembly constituency is likely to impact the politics of Uttar Pradesh.
During campaigning, Akhilesh Yadav raked up the employment issue and promised that 11 lakh vacant government jobs would be filled if his party was voted to power.
Born in Saifai on July 1, 1973, Yadav entered politics in 2000, winning a Lok Sabha bypoll from Kannauj and is now the MP from Azamgarh.
Yadav studied at the Military School in Dholpur, Rajasthan and then got his bachelor's and master's degrees in Civil Environmental Engineering from JSS Science and Technology University. He also has a master's degree in environmental engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia, PTI reported.
Married to Dimple Yadav, Yadav has two daughters and a son.
In 2012, after a stint as the head of the SP’s youth wing and then the party's UP president, he became the state’s youngest ever CM at 38.