NEW DELHI, March 22: After weighing all the pros and cons, the Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has finally taken the difficult decision for himself and his party colleague Azam Khan opting to resign from the Lok Sabha keeping their seats in the Uttar Pradesh state Assembly.
Yadav and the jailed SP leader Azam Khan on Tuesday resigned from the Lok Sabha, after being elected to the state legislative assembly.
A senior SP leader confirmed that Akhilesh and Azam have resigned from their parliamentary seats of Azamgarh and Rampur respectively. “Akhileshji has chosen to serve as an MLA from Karhal in Mainpuri district. Similarly, Azam will serve as an MLA from the Rampur Assembly seat,” said the leader.
In the recently concluded state polls, Akhilesh had won the Karhal seat after securing 1,48,196 votes, while BJP’s SP Singh Baghel came a distant second with 80,692 votes. This was Akhilesh’s first state election, after he had taken the MLC route to become the chief minister in 2012.
Azam had won the Rampur seat by a margin of 55,141 votes against BJP’s Akash Saxena. He had been elected a Lok Sabha member from the Rampur Lok Sabha seat in 2019.
Akhilesh on Tuesday met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and tendered his resignation, with a strong indication emerging that he will lead the Opposition in the state Assembly.
He was elected an MP from Azamgarh in 2019 after getting 6.21 lakh votes, against BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ who came second with 3.61 lakh votes. His father and SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav had won from the seat in 2014.
Ever since the results of the UP Assembly elections were announced on March 10 demolishing Yadav’s hopes of ousting the BJP government in the state, speculations were on about the SP leaders’ next move about the options between the Lok Sabha and the Assembly seats. The party sources believed that Yadav’s quitting the Assembly in preference to the Lok Sabha seat could further demolish the SP’s chances of staging a comeback at least in the next elections in 2027, while his opting out of the Lok Sabha could also weaken the combined opposition’s challenge to the supremacy of the BJP and the prime minister Narendra Modi in the 2024 Parliamentary elections.
(Manas Dasgupta)
