Samajwadi Secular Front to contest all 80 LS seats: Shivpal Yadav
Lucknow, Aug 31 : Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Shivpal Singh Yadav, who has revolted against his nephew and party chief Akhilesh Yadav to float "Samajwadi Secular Front", announced on Friday that his new outfit will contest all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general elections.
Talking to reporters after meeting his supporters and party workers in Baghpat in western Uttar Pradesh, Shivpal Yadav said his is a long fight and that he would assimilate all who have been "marginalized and humiliated" in the SP.
Buoyed by the grand welcome accorded to him by party workers, he also ruled out any truck with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Trashing such reports as a ploy by his opponents to dent his image, the former state SP chief said he was forced to form the Front after being pushed to a corner, with humiliation heaped on him by the present leadership of the party he founded with his elder brother 26 years back.
"We made the SP with lot of passion and hard work, but now the seniors are being sidelined and humiliated. This couldn't have gone on endlessly...and hence the formation of the Front was decided," he said.
The objective of the Front, he added, is to work for development of Uttar Pradesh and take up the cudgels on behalf of the poor, weaker sections and the oppressed.
Asked what are his differences with Akhilesh Yadav, he ducked the question by saying he has differences with no one now.
When asked if he is working in tandem with his old friend and former SP General Secretary Amar Singh, he answered in the negative.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
