Lucknow/IBNS: The Samajwadi Party (SP) Tuesday announced the names of five more candidates, including sitting MLA and national general secretary Shivpal Singh, for the Lok Sabha elections slated to be held this year.

The party has fielded Shivpal Singh, who is a sitting MLA from Jaswantnagar and uncle of SP chief chief Akhilesh Yadav, from Badaun. This seat was considered to be SP's bastion till 2019 when the daughter of senior leader Swami Prasad Maurya and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Sanghmitra Maurya defeated Dharmendra Yadav, Akhilesh's cousin.

SP has named former minister Surendra Singh Patel as its candidate from Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It has fielded Iqra Hassan, sister of SP MLA Nahid Hassan, from Kairana.

The party has fielded former MP Praveen Singh Aron from Bareilly. Singh was elected MP from the same seat in 2004 Lok Sabha elections on Congress ticket. He later switched to SP in 2022.

SP has named Ajendra Singh Rajpaut as its candidate for the Hamirpur seat. It may be noted that with this SP has declared its candidates on 32 Lok Sabha seats so far.

With this announcement, the total number of candidates named by the party counts up to 32.

Meanwhile, in a final offer to the Congress party, the SP gave its final offer of 17 seats to the Congress -- up from the initial 11.

The hike came after Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal set to be part of the NDA