The Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and the party’s general secretary Azam Khan on Tuesday resigned from their Lok Sabha membership to retain their recently won Assembly seats.
Akhilesh and Azam were elected members of Parliament from Azamgarh and Rampur respectively in 2019.
Akhilesh and Azam will remain MLAs from Karhal (Mainpuri) and Rampur Assembly seats respectively and apparently focus on the state politics.
Akhilesh met Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla in his office in Delhi on Tuesday and handed over the resignation to him. Azam’s resignation was emailed from his office to the speaker as he has been in jail for the last two years in over a dozen criminal and civil cases.
“It is a big decision for us as we need to concentrate on Uttar Pradesh to dislodge the Bharatiya Janata Party and save the country. We are in the biggest state of the country and uprooting the BJP here will automatically check the hate politics of this party,” said Rajendra Chaudhary, spokesperson of the SP.
“The situation is such that the BJP has won the Assembly elections by cheating and other tricks and now sponsored The Kashmir Files, a film that shows one side of the story, misleads the country and diverting the people’s attention from its mischief,” said Chaudhary.
SP MLC candidates attacked
The nomination papers of Udai Veer Singh and Rakesh Yadav, two SP nominees for Legislative Council from Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri were rejected as the Election Commission of India found errors in them.
The two leaders were allegedly attacked by some people on Monday at the gates of the collectorate, when they had gone to file their papers.
The SP state president Naresh Uttam alleged that it was done by the BJP leaders to win the seats unopposed.
There are videos doing rounds on social media in which some people could be seen surrounding the two SP candidates and manhandling them.
Since Om Prakash Singh and Ashish Yadav of the BJP are the only candidates in the fray in Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri, they would be declared winners unopposed on April 9.
Akhilesh tweeted in Hindi on Tuesday: “Expecting protection of democracy under the BJP rule is like looking for stars during the daytime. It is a condemnable form of muscle power that either they would prevent (us) from filing nomination papers or influence the election or results. Democracy is crushed in the fear of defeat.”
BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh said, “The SP is a defeated party. I suggest the SP leaders to work honestly for the poor and play the role of a constructive opposition.”
“Their being in Lok Sabha or state assembly doesn’t affect us by any way”, said the BJP UP boss.
Alok Awasthi, spokesperson of UP BJP said, “Akhilesh loves London more than anything else and goes there every now and then. He remained quarantined for five years and now expects people’s support. We suggest him to stay in UP, attend Vidhan Sabbha sessions and work for the people.”
