News Analysis India

Tag: Samajwadi Party

  • Rift within Yadav family widens, chinks appear in SP alliance post UP polls defeat

    Express News Service

    LUCKNOW: While the chasm in Yadav family seems to have widened further, the chinks in the armour of the alliance, led by the Samajwadi Party, surfaced on Tuesday.

    On one hand, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle and Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia chief Shivpal Yadav boycotted the meeting of allies called by Akhilesh in Lucknow, on the other, an important ally Mahan Dal was not invited to the meeting which was convened to ascertain the reasons of alliance’s defeat in recently concluded UP elections.

    Even Apna Dal (K) leader Pallavi Patel, who had contested the assembly election on SP symbol from Sirathu defeating BJP’s Keshav Maurya, did not make it to the meeting. 

    However, the reason for her absence is said to be her unhappiness over the alleged SP’s treatment with allies.

    As per the invite shared by the SP on twitter, leaders of four parties—Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party’s (SBSP) OP Rajbhar, PSP-L chief Shivpal Yadav, Apna Dal (K)’s Pallavi Patel and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) Legislative Party leader Rajpal Baliyan were invited to the review meeting. SP alliance has won 125 seats in the recently concluded UP polls. 

    While SP bagged 111 seats, smaller allies including RLD got eight seats and SBSP six seats. While Apna Dal (K) could not win any seat on its ticket, none of the Mahan Dal candidate could make it to the Assembly.

    When Akhilesh Yadav was chairing the meeting with allies at SP headquarters in Lucknow, his uncle Shivpal Yadav was in Etawah busy attending a religious function. 

    Shivpal reached Etawah back on Tuesday after meeting elder brother and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav in Delhi.

    Sulking Shivpal, taking the vow to open his mouth at an appropriate time, had proceeded to Etawah after he was not invited to SP legislative party meeting in which Akhilesh was elected SPLP leader on Saturday. 

    He had openly expressed his discontent over not being invited to SPLP meeting.

    However, after Shivpal’s outburst, SP had rushed to issue the clarification saying that none of the allies were called to the meeting and Shivpal too fell in the category of allies. Whereas Shivpal contended that he was an SP MLA who contested and won the Jaswantnagar seat on SP symbol so he should have been invited to the SP legislative party meeting.

    In fact, Shivpal has been sulking since his party was not spared even a single seat to contest in the recently concluded elections. 

    Even Shivpal was made to contest on SP symbol from his traditional Jaswantnagar seat which he won by over 90,000 votes. 

    During the elections, Shivpal failed to hide his discontent when he had claimed that he agreed to contest on SP symbols sacrificing his own party following Mulayam Singh Yadav’s instructions.

    It may be recalled that Akhilesh had reached out to Shivpal ahead of Assembly elections offering him to contest the polls on SP symbol from Jaswantnagar.

  • Akhilesh Yadav appointed as Opposition leader, SP legislature party chief in Uttar Pradesh Assembly

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav was appointed the leader of opposition in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Saturday, hours after he was unanimously elected as the leader of the SP legislature party.

    Yadav, who won from Karhal in Mainpuri in his maiden assembly contest and chose to quit his Lok Sabha membership to focus on the state politics, will come face-to-face with his principal opponent and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the Assembly for the first time as he looks at future electoral battles.

    In a statement, Principal Secretary of the UP Assembly Pradip Kumar Dubey announced Yadav’s appointment as the leader of opposition with effect from March 26.

    Earlier in the day, Uttar Pradesh Samajwadi Party chief Naresh Uttam had announced Yadav’s election as the leader of the legislature party. Under Yadav’s leadership, the SP will raise various issues concerning people in the assembly, counter any false claims made by the state government and oppose its wrong policies, Uttam said.

    In a related development, while the SP legislature party meeting was underway, Yadav’s uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav who has been elected MLA from his traditional Jaswant Nagar seat in Etawah on an SP ticket told reporters that he has not been invited to attend it.

    “I have no information about the meeting. I tried to contact SP leaders but I have not got any information about it. Under these circumstances, it will not be correct for me to go to the legislature party meeting,” Shivpal Singh Yadav said.

    “I have always said that I will fulfil whatever responsibility I am given, but I was not called for the legislature party meeting though I am an MLA from Samajwadi Party,” he added.

    Asked about Shivpal Singh Yadav not being invited, Naresh Uttam clarified, “Only Samajwadi Party MLAs were called for today’s meeting. On March 28, a meeting of MLAs of the alliance partners, irrespective of whether they had contested on ‘bicycle’ (SP symbol) or their party symbols, will be held.”

    “Shivpal Singh has a party of his own and is an alliance partner and MLAs of all the alliance partners are being called for the meeting on March 28. Akhilesh Yadav will consult them and people’s issues will be raised in the house after discussion and in agreement with the alliance partners,” Uttam said.

    ALSO READ| With Akhilesh set to become leader of opposition in UP assembly, things not hunky-dory with his uncle

    Uttam said that during the meeting, the newly elected MLAs lauded the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav.

    “The MLAs have given their blessings to Akhilesh-ji to raise various issues faced by people in the Assembly and forcefully oppose false claims and wrong policies of the government. In the past too, the BJP government had from time to time misled the people and cheated them and therefore, the BJP has got lesser number of seats than last time,” he said.

    “The people showed confidence in Akhilesh Yadav-ji and voted to make him the chief minister but with the misuse of power and official machinery, names of large numbers of SP supporters were removed from the voters’ list which is a black spot on democracy,” he alleged.

    He also accused the BJP of using its “money power” in the elections. Akhilesh Yadav defeated BJP MP SP Singh Baghel to win the Karhal seat by around 60,000-odd votes in his first assembly contest. In 2012, when he became the chief minister, he had opted to become a member of the legislative council.

    The SP-led alliance has 125 members in the 403-member assembly, including six MLAs of ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party and eight of the Rashtriya Lok Dal. In 2017, the SP had won 47 seats.

  • Akhilesh Yadav resigns from Azamgarh parliamentary constituency

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday submitted his resignation from the Azamgarh parliamentary constituency to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.

    Akhilesh Yadav had won the Karhal assembly seat in the recently-held assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

    Besides him, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has four other members in the Lok Sabha, including his father Mulayam Singh Yadav.

    Akhilesh Yadav has decided to concentrate on state politics by resigning from his Lok Sabha seat.

  • Mulayam Singh Yadav is ‘B-team of BJP’, not BSP: Mayawati attacks Samajwadi Party

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: Hitting back at “B-team of BJP” jibe, BSP supremo Mayawati on Tuesday alleged that rather than her party, it is Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav who is openly with the saffron party and also got his son blessed by it.

    She also attacked Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav for changing the names of institutions named after B R Ambedkar during his tenure.

    “It is not the BSP, but SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav who is openly with the BJP. In the last swearing-in, he had got Shri Akhilesh blessed by the BJP and has now sent a member to the BJP for his work,” Mayawati tweeted in Hindi, in an apparent reference to Mulayam’s daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav, who recently joined the BJP.

    “The Ambedkarites of UP will never forgive SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, who had changed most of the names of schemes and institutions named after him (B R Ambedkar) during his (SP) government, which is disgusting and shameful,” she said in another tweet.

    The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is often called the “B-team of BJP” by its political rivals, especially after Union Home Minister Amit Shah remarked that the party has maintained its relevance.

    “The BSP has maintained its relevance. I believe they will get votes. I do not know how much of it will convert into seats, but it will get votes,” Shah had said during the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

    Mayawati had later appreciated Shah for acknowledging that her party would get votes.

    The senior BJP leader’s remark had also triggered speculation over the possibility of a post-election tie-up between the two parties.

    In 1995, 1997 and 2002, Mayawati was sworn in as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh with BJP’s support.

  • SP alliance lost Uttar Pradesh polls because of dishonesty and cunningness of BJP: Shivpal Singh Yadav

    By PTI

    ETAWAH: Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohiya) leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Friday claimed that the Samajwadi Party-led alliance lost the recent Uttar Pradesh assembly elections because of “dishonesty and cunningness” of the BJP.

    He said the alliance has the backing of the people and it will face the challenges firmly.

    “Our (SP alliance) seats and vote percentage have increased in the elections. The people of the state did not defeat the SP. It was because of BJP’s dishonesty and cunningness that we lost,” Yadav, who got elected from his traditional Jaswant Nagar seat, told newspersons here.

    Some ministers in the BJP-led central government as well as many officers of the state government are involved in “this design of the BJP”, he alleged.

    The people of the state are with us, so we are not afraid.

    We will face the challenges and problems firmly and will continue to work to provide justice to people, Shivpal Yadav, who is the uncle of Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav asserted.

    Shivpal Yadav had got into a tussle with Akhilesh Yadav and formed the PSP before the assembly polls in 2017 but contested the 2022 elections in alliance with the SP.

  • Post-Assembly polls, SP forgets ‘social inclusiveness’, fields 16 Yadavs out of 22 in MLC elections

    Express News Service

    LUCKNOW: Belying the tall claims of ‘social inclusiveness’ during the recently concluded Assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party seems to have gone back to its basics, banking more upon its core vote bank in the upcoming Vidhan Parishad (UP Legislative Council) polls by fielding 16 of the 22 candidates from the Yadav community.  

    During the Assembly elections, the SP had given a push to social engineering to wash off the tag of being a party of only Muslims and Yadavs. Among the other six candidates declared by the party so far, two are Muslims including Dr Kafeel Khan, paediatrician for the Deoria–Kushinagar seat, and Maqsoor Ahmad for the Rampur-Bareily segment. The four others are Anurag Verma for Lakhimpur Kheri, Virendra Shankar Singh for Rae Bareli, Bhanu Kumar for Gonda and Arunesh Kumar for Sitapur.

    The party has placed its bet on youngsters with almost 50% candidates being first-timers and denied tickets to non-performing members who were part of the council earlier.

    ALSO READ: Yogi’s swearing-in ceremony to be no small affair; BJP to invite 200 VVIPs including Gandhis

    The voting for the MLC polls on 36 seats across 35 local bodies of the state will be held on April 9 and counting of votes will be held on April 12. All the public representatives right from the MLAs to corporators and district panchayat members will vote for their respective region wise seats in these polls. Etah-Mathura-Mainpuri segment elects two candidates.

    The list released by the SP so far includes the names of Anurag Verma (Kheri), Manoj Kumar Yadav (Jaunpur), Umesh Kumar Yadav (Varanasi), Amar Yadav (Bahraich), Vijay Bahadur Yadav (Pratapgarh) and Dileep Singh Yadav (Agra-Ferozabad), sitting MLC Sunil Singh Yadav ‘Sajan’ from Lucknow-Unnao seat, Rajesh Yadav (Barabanki), Amit Yadav (Pilibhit–Shahjahanpur), Rajneesh Yadav(Gorakhpur–Maharajganj), Shyam Sunder Singh Yadav (Jhansi–Jalaun–Lalitpur), Santosh Yadav (Basti–Siddharthnagar), Virendra Shanker Singh (Rae Bareli), Heera Lal Yadav (Faizabad), Rajesh Kumar Yadav alias Guddu (Azamgarh–Mau), Udaiveer Singh Yadav for Etah-Mathura-Mainpuri, Maqsoor Ahmed (Rampur–Bareilly) and Dr Kafeel Khan for Doeria-Kushinagar.

    Late on Thursday evening, the party announced four more names — Arvind Yadav (Ballia), Bhola Nath Yadav (Ghazipur), Bhanu Kumar (Gonda) and Arunesh Kumar (Sitapur) — taking the list of candidates to 22.

    Sources said the party has authorised almost all the 36 candidates to file their nominations and was unlikely to officially release more names. The candidates have been asked to file their nominations directly.

  • BJP’s ways endangering ‘purity’ of politics: Akhilesh

    He said that his party will continue to raise the voice of the people vigorously inside and outside of the Assembly House.

  • Saffron reigns in Uttar Pradesh as BJP scores thumping win, Samajwadi Party at distant second

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday, trouncing its main rival Samajwadi Party, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.

    The saffron party with its allies was winning or leading in 274 seats out of 403, becoming the first party in over three decades to form a government for a second consecutive time in the state.

    The Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav and its allies lost after a spirited bid to dislodge the BJP, winning or leading in 124 seats, while national parties like the Congress (two two seats) and the BSP (one seat) were reduced to insignificance in the race.

    ALSO READ: Uttar Pradesh polls – NOTA garners more votes than those polled in favour of popular parties

    As counting of votes continued late into the night, Adityanath had established a lead of 1.3 lakh votes over his nearest rival Subhawati Shukla of the SP in the Gorakhpur Urban constituency.

    However, his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya lost in Sirathu by 7,337 votes to SP’s Pallavi Patel.

    Influential OBC leader Swami Prasad Maurya, who quit the BJP and the Adityanath cabinet to join the SP ahead of the assembly elections, lost in Fazilnagar by more than 45,000 votes.

    The BJP was winning or leading in 256 seats, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and the NISHAD party, the two allies of the BJP, are winning or leading in 12 seats and six seats respectively, according to the Election Commission (EC) website.

    ALSO READ: Mayawati – Dalit leader, four-time CM fails Uttar Pradesh test

    In the opposition camp, the SP was winning or leading in 110 seats and its allies Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has eight seats and the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party had won or was ahead in six seats.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Adityanath’s feat and suggested that the victory in Uttar Pradesh will pave the wave for the BJP’s win in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

    Lauding BJP workers for ensuring an early Holi by making the party victorious in four states, Modi said its vote share has increased in Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Goa even though it was in power in the states.

    The party has also retained power in Uttarkhand.

    ALSO READ: SP president Akhilesh Yadav keeps eye on results from party office, no comment from him yet

    In Lucknow, addressing joyous BJP workers at the party’s state headquarters, Adityanath said the “misleading” campaign run by the Opposition over the past 2-3 days has been set aside by the people who reposed faith in the good governance of the BJP.

    He was apparently targeting Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav over EVM tampering allegations.

    “The false propaganda regarding EVMs and election material over the last few days have been rejected,” Adityanath said.

    “The People of UP have buried the dynastic politics and also politics of caste and religion by ensuring victory to the BJP and its allies,” Adityanath, who was the BJP’s face in Uttar Pradesh polls, said.

    ALSO READ: Congress relegated to margins in UP: Its seat tally down to 2 from 7, vote share to 2.35% from 6.25%

    According to the EC website at 10.30 PM, results had been declared on 369 seats, while counting was going on 34 seats.

    Dara Singh Chauhan, another minister who had quit the cabinet along with Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini to join the SP, has won the Ghosi seat by 22,216.

    Saini lost the elections to BJP’s Mukesh Choudhary by 315 votes.

    State Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu was languishing at the third spot in the Tamukhi Raj assembly constituency, according to the EC website.

    ALSO READ: ‘Bulldozer baba’ – Mighty Yogi Adityanath’s new sobriquet

    Amid the rout of the party, Congress legislature party leader Aradhana Mishra won from her family’s traditional Rampur Khas constituency in Pratapgarh district.

    According to the EC, the BJP’s vote share stands at 41.3 percent, while that of the SP stood at 32 percent.

    The vote share of the BSP is 12.9 percent and that of the RLD is 2.93 percent.

    The vote share of the Congress is 2.37 percent while that of AAP and AIMIM was less than .5 percent each.

    Though it registered a landslide victory in Punjab, Aam Aadmi Party filed to open its account in Uttar Pradesh where it contested on all 403 seats.

    Similar was the fate of Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi headed AIMIM which had fielded candidates in 100 seats.

    Excited BJP supporters smeared colour (gulal) on each other and rolled out bulldozers in Lucknow, Gorakhpur and Varanasi among other places to celebrate the victory.

    Adityanath, who is generally referred to as “Maharaj ji”, earned this new sobriquet of “bulldozer baba” during the current elections due to his frequent reference of the heavy machine that authorities deployed to raze the ill-gotten property of criminals and mafias in the state under his rule.

  • SP president Akhilesh Yadav keeps eye on results from party office, no comment from him yet

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav remained in the party office till Thursday evening monitoring the poll results in which his party-led alliance lost to the BJP-headed coalition.

    There was no comment from him on the poll outcome till late night on Thursday.

    Party’s national spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary told PTI that Yadav had come to the office around 11.00 in the morning, and remained there throughout the day.

    He left for home in the evening.

    When asked whether the SP chief talked about the poll results, Chaudhary said he will review the election outcome.

    Yadav himself won from the Karhal assembly seat by a margin of 67,504 votes.

    He defeated Union minister SP Singh Baghel of the BJP.

    However, his party (SP) and allies could not stop the BJP from getting re-elected for the second consecutive time in Uttar Pradesh.

  • Voting begins for last phase of UP polls; 613 candidates in fray on 54 seats

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: Voting for the seventh and the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections began on Monday morning, with 613 candidates in the fray on 54 seats, including those falling in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary segment Varanasi.

    The fate of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party president Om Prakash Rajbhar and several state ministers will be decided in this round, in which 2.06 crore people are eligible to vote.

    Voting will be held from 7 am to 4 pm on the Chakia (Chandauli), Robertsganj and Duddhi (Sonbhadra) seats while in the rest of the segments, it will continue till 6 pm.

    The districts going to the polls in this phase are Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra.

    Once considered a stronghold of the Samajwadi Party, the region saw the BJP making inroads in 2017 by winning 29 seats.

    The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) got six seats and the SP 11.

    For the SP, its patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav made a rare appearance in Jaunpur to drum up support for Lucky Yadav, the son of his long-time associate the late Parasnath Yadav.

    Lucky Yadav is in the fray from the Malhani seat.

    Mulayam had earlier campaigned for his son Akhilesh Yadav in the Karhal Assembly segment of Mainpuri.

    Besides state Tourism Minister Neelkanth Tiwari (Varanasi South), other ministers in the fray in the last leg of the elections are Anil Rajbhar (Shivpur-Varanasi), Ravindra Jaiswal (Varanasi North), Girish Yadav (Jaunpur) and Ramashankar Singh Patel (Marihan-Mirzapur).

    Dara Singh Chauhan, who had resigned from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and had joined the SP, is contesting from Ghosi in Mau.

    Om Prakash Rajbhar (Zahoorabad), Dhananjay Singh (Malhani-Jaunpur) as the JD(U) candidate, and Abbas Ansari, the son of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, from Mau Sadar seat, are contesting in this phase.

    Campaigning in this phase reached its crescendo with Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading the BJP’s poll blitzkrieg in Varanasi and its adjoining districts.

    Besides addressing election rallies, he also held a roadshow for three Assembly constituencies in his Lok Sabha segment.

    This phase also saw West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee descending on the pilgrim city to hold a joint rally with Akhilesh Yadav and his RLD ally Jayant Chaudhary.

    Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had been camping in Varanasi for about four days.

    She, along with her brother Rahul Gandhi, addressed election meetings, whereas BSP supremo Mayawati campaigned in the district and neighbouring areas.

    Seeking to override anti-incumbency, the ruling party raised issues like forced migration and law and order problems during the previous SP government, while Akhilesh Yadav targeted the BJP government on the issues of inflation, unemployment, stray cattle, and the farmers’ agitation against the Centre’s agriculture laws.

    The mowing down of four farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri was also highlighted by all opposition parties as Union minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra is an accused in the case.

    The state has 403 Assembly seats and the results of the elections will be declared on March 10.