Two Samajwadi Party leaders have disagreed with the party leadership over Jaya Bachchan’s candidature for the Rajya Sabha.
Apna Dal (K) vice-president Pallavi Patel, who had won the Assembly election in 2022 on an SP ticket, told reporters in Lucknow on Wednesday: “There could be a better and genuine candidate instead of Jaya Bachchan. The party is campaigning among the backward, Dalit and Muslim communities but it doesn’t think that a candidate from those communities should be fielded. I can’t close my eyes to such hypocrisy.”
“Denying a ticket to a member of the PDA (Peechra, Dalit and Muslim) is a kind of cheating. I am not a part of this cheating. The SP gets Muslim votes but out of three candidates nominated for the Upper House, none is from the PDA. It could also have fielded a woman of the PDA instead of the actress,” Pallavi said.
An SP MP since 2004, Jaya, if elected on February 27, would be in the Upper House for the fifth consecutive term.
Besides Jaya, the SP has also fielded former bureaucrat Alok Ranjan and Ramjilal Suman.
Sources in the SP said that Jaya’s candidature had also angered Swami Prasad Maurya. Maurya had tendered his resignation from the post of party general secretary on Tuesday and said that Akhilesh was treating him indifferently.
“Maurya wanted the party to take his suggestion before declaring the names of the Rajya Sabha candidates but it didn’t happen. He was strongly in favour of replacing Jaya with a backward or a Dalit candidate,” a senior SP leader said.
