Ram Gopal Yadav and Dhanraj Parimal Nathwani arrive to file their nomination papers for the 2026 Rajya Sabha elections in the presence of party national president Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow on Wednesday. Samajwadi Party candidates Prof.
After filing his nomination papers Dhanraj, 40, took to X to thank the SP chief for nominating him as the party candidate for the Upper House of Parliament. There are 10 seats to be grabbed in UP and SP has numbers to get two candidates easily elected. In 2004, the party, under Mulayam Singh Yadav, had sent Anil Ambani to the upper house. A sports enthusiast, Dhanraj has been the president of the Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) since he was elected unopposed in 2022, replacing Amit Shah.
Recently, Akhilesh Yadav, while responding to a media query on probable names for Rajya Sabha had said that the party would come up as a surprise candidate, and rightly so. “Does PDA stand for Parivar (family), Daulatmand (wealthy) and Apradhi (criminals),” he asked. Lucknow: Dhanraj Parimal Nathwani, a group president at Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), is Samajwadi Party ’s ‘surprise’ pick for the Rajya Sabha elections. He described his entry into the Rajya Sabha as a new phase of his public life and thanked everyone who showed faith and trust in him. Even when Akhilesh was talking about the surprise candidate, it was assumed that he was referring to the third candidate from the party. Ram Gopal Yadav, whose term is ending now, and former UP chief secretary Alok Ranjan were considered as two sure-shot candidates. However, with the second slot going to Nathwani, there is a question mark on Ranjan’s candidature. Nathwani’s selection is a renewal of SP’s old association with the Reliance Group. However, it has come at odds with the India bloc’s recent consistent campaign against Ambani-Adani, calling them symbols of crony capitalism, and coming soon after the disappearance of Ambani’s picture from the collage on the backdrop at Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s recent press conference against the ECI, triggering chatter in political circles. Nathanis have had a long association with the Ambanis; Parimal worked closely with Reliance founder Dhirubhai Ambani before he joined Mukesh. A close confidant of the family, Parimal led the land acquisition for the Reliance Group’s world’s largest oil refinery in Jamnagar, Gujarat. Dhanraj himself heads manufacturing and business verticals of RIL, is a board member of Reliance Corporate IT Park Limited and oversees RIL’s Jamnagar manufacturing divisions. He also oversees Reliance Jio Defence Systems Limited as well. Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief and UP cabinet minister chief OP Rajbhar questioned the candidature of Ram Gopal and Dhanraj to target SP’s PDA pitch. The SP dismissed Rajbhar’s response as a ‘panic reaction’ which was politically irrelevant.
Accompanied by SP national president Akhilesh Yadav , Nathwani and SP secretary general Ram Gopal Yadav filed their nomination papers for the polls on Wednesday. When SP declared Dhanraj’s candidature on its X account on Wednesday morning, he defied the general assessment that the party would follow its set MY (Muslim-Yadav) or PDA (Picchda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) template in candidate selection. On Wednesday, when asked about the possibility of fielding the third candidate, Akhilesh said “We will consider that as soon as we have enough votes.