Akhilesh Yadav expels three rebel MLAs from Samajwadi Party for supporting BJP

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Monday expelled three rebel party legislators, who had supported the BJP in last year’s Rajya Sabha biennial polls and had been criticising their own party’s stand on various issues.

According to the SP sources, the three MLAs, who were expelled included Abhay Singh, Rakesh Pratap Singh and Manoj Pandey.

‘’All these legislators had sided with the communal elements and opposed the SP’s PDA (Pichda, alpsankhyak, Dalit) plank.,’’ SP spokesman Fakhrul Hasan said here.

The party also posted its decision to expel the three MLAs on its official ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) handle.

‘’These MLAs were given ample time to mend their ways and regret their actions but they continued their anti-party activities,’’ the SP said.

Interestingly, Akhilesh spared four other party legislators Rakesh Pandey, Pooja Pal, Vinod Chaturvedi and Ashutosh Maurya, who had also cross voted in the RS biennial polls along with the three expelled MLAs.

‘’These four MLAs have been spared as there are indications that they were having a change of heart....they have also refrained from attacking the party president,’’ said the SP leader.

Cross voting by the SP MLAs during the RS polls last year had enabled the eighth BJP nominee Sanjay Seth to scrape through though the saffron party had the numbers to ensure victory of only seven candidates.

Reacting to his expulsion, Manoj Pandey, an MLA from Unchahar assembly constituency in Raebareli district said that he was happy to finally get rid of the people who were against Lord Rama.