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SP distances itself from Cong in MLC bypolls, latter abstains
SP president Akhilesh Yadav had maintained that his party would not have any tie up with the Congress for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the SP will contest all the 80 seats along with its allies
LUCKNOW The Samajwadi Party (SP) is maintaining distance from the Congress and that’s evident from the fact that it did not even approach the party to seek votes for two SP MLC candidates in Monday’s bypolls to two seats. As a result, the Congress abstained from voting.
There were only SP candidates against two BJP candidates. The bypolls to the two seats were necessitated after the resignation of Laxman Acharya (now the Governor of Sikkim) and the death of Banwari Lal Dohre.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav had maintained that his party would not have any tie up with the Congress for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the SP will contest all the 80 seats along with its allies.
In March, Yadav had said that the Congress should support the respective regional parties in different states. “It’s time that the Congress should keep regional parties in the front and support them to defeat the BJP,” he said.
The SP chief was quick to extend support to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee when she showed a similar stance and said her party would support the Congress wherever it is strong, and in turn, the Congress should support her party TMC in West Bengal.
Yadav had been talking about a non-Congress and non-BJP alliance led by the SP in Uttar Pradesh that sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
The SP formally approached the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) seeking votes for the MLC polls, it did not approach the Congress. “They did not call or meet. We waited till the end of the day before the polling day,” said a senior Congress leader. Meanwhile, a senior SP leader said: “Our two candidates had made an appeal to all the MLAs — across all parties — to vote as per their conscience.”
The communications cell of the Congress on Sunday had tweeted that the SP had not contacted it and under these circumstances, the party’s UP in-chrage Priyanka Gandhi will take a decision. Finally, two Congress MLAs --Aradhana Mishra and Virendra Chaudhary -- abstained from voting.
On polling day, UP Congress chief Brijlal Khabri said: “A decision was taken by the party not to vote for any of the candidates in the MLC bypoll, and hence both the legislators did not cast their votes.”
The lone BSP MLA Uma Shankar Singh, who did not cast his vote, said: “I could not reach the polling centre to vote in the bypoll.” Based on its strength in the legislative assembly, the BJP comfortably won the two seats.
The BJP had fielded Manvendra Singh and Padamsen Chowdhary, both of whom emerged victorious after the results were declared. The SP had fielded a Dalit Ramkaran Nirmal and a backward candidate Ramjatan Rajbhar, but both lost. The SP had entered into the fray at the last moment apparently to give a message that it would not let the ruling party get a walkover.
