In a setback to Akhilesh Yadav, two members of UP Legislative Council belonging to the Samajwadi Party, resigned from the party today citing growing lack of confidence in the party leadership.
The SP MLCs who have quit the party are Bukkal Nawab and Yashwant Singh. Even a BSP MLC Jaiveer Singh has reportedly decided to quit his party.
After tendering his resignation, MLC Bukkal Nawab – who is also the founder of Rashtriya Shia Samaj – showered praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. He stated that:
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is doing good work and PM Modi has given a good slogan of ”Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas”. If they invite, then I might go with BJP. Yogi is also doing a good job in the state. At least there has not been any scam yet
Nawab who belonged to the Mulayam camp looked like using the pretext of the alleged family feud to justify his decision, “I was feeling very suffocated since last one-year. When Akhilesh is not with his own father, how he can be with the people of UP.”
Nawab also quipped that Samajwadi Party has turned into “akhadaa” under Akhilesh Yadav’s leadership and the party should be renamed as ‘Samajwadi Akhaada’.
Interestingly, the resignation of the SP MLCs came on a day when BJP president Amit Shah reached Lucknow on a three-day visit to the state. Shah is scheduled to meet Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his cabinet, senior BJP leaders in the state and the RSS functionaries.
The resignation of these MLCs has cleared the path for the election of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya to get elected to the Legislative Council. This way they won’t need to fight an election and become an MLA. But it would be interesting to see which route the BJP leaders choose to take.
It is also noteworthy that the SP currently holds the majority in the 100-member Legislative Council with 66(now 62) MLCs and the BJP just holds 8. So this resignations are unlikely to make any dent in the SP’s presence in the council.
