Akhilesh dissolves all SP executive bodies
LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday dissolved all the party’s national, state and district executive bodies, including the youth and the women’s wing.
The party’s communique on Twitter did not cite any reason behind the decision. The action comes a week after the party’s loss in Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha bypolls, where it lost both the Rampur and Azamgarh seats.
“The national president of Samajwadi Party Akhilesh Yadav, except for the state president of the party, with immediate effect dissolved party’s national, state and district executive bodies. National presidents, state presidents, district presidents of all the party’s organisations, including youth and women’s wings, have also been dissolved,” the party said on its Twitter handle.
Party leaders however, denied any link between the bypoll losses and Yadav’s Sunday
action.
“You don’t dissolve the entire party’s organisational structure for bypoll losses on one or two seats. This action was pending since the end of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls,” a party functionary said, seeking anonymity. “The party often dissolves its organisational structure after a general election, irrespective of win or loss, and then reconstructs it for the next polls. The party, this time, waited for the Rajya Sabha, Vidhan Sabha (state legislative council), and parliamentary bypolls to be over,” said the functionary.
“The party will take some time before reconstituting all the units afresh, as the reconstitution will be aimed at the 2024
Lok Sabha polls,” the functionary added. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the decision was an nternal matter of the SP, but asked why Yadav did not take the responsibility for bypoll losses himself. “The party should tell people why it lost elections under Akhilesh Yadav. Why Yadav himself did not take responsibility for the defeats,” BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi told PTI.
The BJP’S Dinesh Lal Yadav defeated SP candidate Dharmendra Yadav, a cousin of Akhilesh Yadav, by 8,679 votes in Azamgarh. The BJP candidate secured 312,768 votes while the SP candidate got 304,089 votes. The Lok Sabha seat was earlier represented by Akhilesh Yadav, who had resigned after being elected to the Karhal assembly seat in the 2022 assembly polls.
Rampur, the bastion of SP heavyweight Azam Khan, was also wrested by the BJP. The saffron party’s candidate Ghanshyam Lodhi defeated SP’S candidate Asim Raja by a comfortable margin of 42,192 votes.