Lucknow, Mar 17 (IANS): After making a visible effort to present a new image and making the party more broad-based, the SP is back to pampering its core vote base of the Yadavs.

The party has fielded 12 Yadav candidates on 16 seats for the Vidhan Parishad, or Legislative Council, where elections are due in the coming weeks.

The SP has placed its bet on youngsters with almost 50 per cent candidates being first-timers.

The move comes a day after the SP confirmed the candidature of Kafeel Khan as party candidate for the Deoria-Kushinagar seat.

Many of the SP candidates filed their nomination papers on Wednesday.

The voting for the MLC polls on 36 seats under 35 local bodies (Etah, Mathura Mainpuri seat elects two candidates) of the state will be held on April 9 and counting of votes will be held on April 12.

All the public representatives will vote for their respective region wise seats in these polls.

The SP list released on Wednesday includes the names of Anurag Verma (Kheri), Manoj Kumar (Jaunpur), Umesh Kumar (Varanasi), Amar Yadav (Bahraich), Vijay Bahadur Yadav (Pratapgarh) and Dileep Singh Yadav (Agra-Firozabad).

Sitting MLC Sunil Singh Sajan has also been nominated as candidate from Lucknow-Unnao seat.

Names of Rajesh Yadav (Barabanki), Amit Yadav (Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur), Rajnesh Yadav (Gorakhpur-Maharajganj), Shyam Sunder Singh (Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur), Santosh Yadav (Basti-Siddharthnagar), Virendra Shanker Singh (Rae Bareli), Heera Lal Yadav (Faizabad), Rajesh Kumar Yadav alias Guddu (Azamgarh-Mau) and Maqsoor Ahmed (Rampur-Bareilly) also figure in the list.

Candidates have been directed to file their nominations directly, the sources said.