UP Polls: Boost For Akhilesh As 3 BSP Leaders, BJP MLA Join Samajwadi Party

The two MLAs joined the Samajwadi Party at its headquarters in the Uttar Pradesh capital in former chief minister and party supremo Akhilesh Yadav’s presence.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. (File Photo)

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party, which faces a formidable task of trouncing Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led government in the 2022 Uttar Assembly elections, got a shot in the arm on Sunday as two MLAs – BJP’s Digvijay Narain Chaubey and expelled BSP legislator Vinay Shankar Tiwari – joined the party ahead of the high-voltage electoral battle.

The two MLAs joined the Samajwadi Party at its headquarters in the Uttar Pradesh capital in former chief minister and party supremo Akhilesh Yadav’s presence.

Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council’s former chairman Ganesh Shankar Pandey also joined the Samajwadi Party. The BSP had fielded Pandey in 2010 for the council chairman’s post.

Besides, a large number of Brahmins from different political parties also joined Akhilesh Yadav-led party.

Launching a vitriolic attack on the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, the Samajwadi Party supremo said the people will teach a lesson to the BJP in the upcoming assembly elections.

“In the last four-and-half years, work has been done with discrimination. The way in which the British practiced ‘divide and rule’, in the same way, the BJP wants to rule the people by making them feel afraid and killing them,” he said, PTI reported.

Yadav said that no one can forget the October 3 violence in Lakhimpur in which eight people, including four farmers, lost their lives.

Accusing the BJP government of mismanagement during the Covid-19 pandemic, Yadav said that no one can forget the shortage of oxygen in hospitals, floating bodies in rivers and other irregularities.

“The people were made to stand in queues during demonetisation, to get medicines and hospital beds during the pandemic and farmers stood in queues to get fertilisers,” Yadav said.

Asserting the “people will queue up and remove them” in the upcoming elections, he added: “Neither are they able to control the bull nor will they be able to control the bulldozer.”

Escalating his attack on the ruling party, the former chief minister said the BJP government, in its final days, is talking about the election promise of giving tablets to the students, which they had made in 2017.

“It is being heard that these items could be imported from China,” he added.

Responding to a poser on will the Samajwadi Party, if voted to power, order a probe into the alleged fake encounters which took place in the BJP rule in Uttar Pradesh, Yadav said: “Let our election manifesto come. It will have a number of things.”

Meanwhile, Tiwari, an MLA from the state’s Chillupar assembly constituency, lauded the Samajwadi Party chief and called him a “popular leader”.

Asserting “there is a ban on free speech”, Tiwari said that this government “was not formed for democracy (loktantra) but for autocracy (rajtantra)”.

Tiwari, expelled by the BSP earlier on Monday along with his elder brother and former MP Kushal Tiwari who also joined the Samajwadi Party, alleged that the BJP government has sown seeds of hatred and divided the people.