Express News Service
LUCKNOW: UP on Tuesday witnessed some political moves as CM-designate Yogi Adityanath tendered his resignation from the post of member UP Legislative Council while Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav decided to retain his Karhal seat and quit as MP Azamgarh. SP’s Rampur MP Azam Khan also decided to resign from his Lok Sabha post while retaining Rampur from where he has been elected as MLA in the recently concluded Assembly polls.
In the recently concluded assembly polls, the BJP and its allies have romped home for a second consecutive term with a two-thirds majority winning 273 seats. On the other, the main opposition, Samajwadi Party along with its allies increased its tally from 47 to 125 in the house. The BSP and the Congress stood decimated with one and two seats respectively.
On Tuesday morning, Yogi Adityanath submitted his resignation to UP Legislative Council Chairman from the post of MLC after getting elected from Gorakhpur Urban seat to the state assembly recently. Yogi Adityanath made his assembly poll debut from his bastion defeating his nearest rival Shubhawati Shukla of SP by a margin of over 1.20 lakh votes. Yogi had taken up the council membership after being appointed UP CM in 2017. Prior to it, Yogi represented Gorakhpur in Lok Sabha for five straight terms since 1998.
On the other, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who also contested his first assembly polls from his stronghold of Karhal in Mainpuri district in 2022 assembly polls and won the seat with a huge margin of over 60,000 votes, decided to retain his seat to remain active in state politics by resigning from Lok Sabha where he had been representing Azamgarh as MP since 2019.
On Tuesday afternoon, flanked by his uncle and SP RS member Ram Gopal Yadav, Akhilesh visited Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in the Parliament to submit his resignation as MP Azamagrah. Akhilesh was elected to the Lok Sabha from Azamgarh, considered to be the bastion of his father and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Prior to Akhilesh, Mulayam had contested from both Azamgarh and Mainpuri in 2014. After winning both the seats, Mulayam decided to leave Mainpuri and retain Azamgarh then. In the 2019 general election which SP and BSP had fought together, Mulayam contested only from Mainpuri and fielded Akhilesh at Azamgarh.
As per the SP sources, Akhilesh decided to retain Karhal leaving Azamgarh after much consultation with his supporters both in Karhal and Azamgarh. The SP chief had visited Azamgarh to meet his party MLAs on Monday.
Similarly, SP’s Rampur MP Azam Khan, who contested the recently concluded Assembly election from the Rampur assembly segment, has also tendered his resignation from Lok Sabha retaining the post of Rampur MLA. Azam Khan has been languishing in Sitapur Jail since February 2020 in connection with a series of criminal cases pertaining to land grabbing, abduction, cattle theft, extortion, etc.
In 2019, Samajwadi Party had five MPs in Lok Sabha but with the resignation of Akhilesh Yadav and Azam Khan, their number has come down to three in the lower house of Parliament.
