Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and party MP from Rampur, Azam Khan on Tuesday resigned from the Lok Sabha. Khan has been lodged in Sitapur jail for more than two years.
Akhilesh handed over his resignation to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in Delhi on Tuesday.
Akhilesh and Azam Khan resigned from the Lok Sabha after winning the recently-held UP Assembly elections from Karhal and Rampur Assembly seats respectively.
Both leaders have apparently decided to retain their Assembly seats in a bid to give a boost to the party in Uttar Pradesh. The Samajwadi Party had won five Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 General Elections. After the recent resignations, the party's strength will be reduced to three.
According to Samajwadi Party sources, Akhilesh will lead the party in the State and play the role of Leader of Opposition in the UP Assembly. The decision of the SP leaders also appears to be influenced by the decimation of the Bahujan Samaj Party which won just one Assembly seat in the 2022 State Assembly polls.
The former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party came a distant second in the 2022 Assembly elections, securing 111 seats, a massive increase from 47 in the 2017 polls and a vote share of 32.06 per cent.
In the recently-concluded State polls, Akhilesh had won the Karhal seat after securing 1.48 lakh votes, while the BJP’s SP Singh Baghel came a distant second by getting over 80,000 votes.
This was Akhilesh’s first State election, as he had taken the MLC route to become the Chief Minister in 2012.