Lucknow: Weeks after the BSP candidate for Rajya Sabha elections was defeated after cross-voting in favour of the ninth BJP candidate, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav has indicated that his bonhomie with Independent MLA, Raja Bhaiyya from Kunda, is over.
Speaking at a press conference in Lucknow on Saturday, Akhilesh Yadav said that the present scenario doesn’t show that Raja Bhaiyya is on his side.
Going by the pre-poll understanding between SP and BSP, Akhilesh’s MLAs along with Raja Bhaiyya, were supposed to support Mayawati’s candidate for the Rajya Sabha elections. However, Raja Bhaiyya had cross-voted for the BJP, which resulted in the BSP candidate’s loss.
Answering a question about deleting his tweet thanking Raja Bhaiyya for his support, Akhilesh said, “Tweet is a kind of expression and we all tweet to express our feelings. If we get to know that someone is betraying us then we will delete the tweet. If you are with us, then be with us, else one should maintain a distance. But it doesn’t look like Raja Bhaiyya is on our side.”
After the Rajya Sabha loss of BSP candidate Bhim Rao Ambedkar, Akhilesh Yadav had deleted a tweet thanking Raja Bhaiya for his “support” despite the independent MLA having voted for BJP instead. Raja Bhaiya had even met Yadav before the elections and assured him that he would vote for the SP-BSP candidates. However, after voting, he declared that his vote went in favour of the BJP.
Akhilesh deleted his tweet after BSP supremo Mayawati said in a press conference that he should not have trusted Raja Bhaiyya to help them. “Akhilesh Yadav made a mistake in relying on Raja Bhaiyya,” she had said.
The BSP candidate received 32 first preference votes, five short of the required number to get a Rajya Sabha berth. He lost to BJP’s Anil Kumar Agarwal in the second round of counting.
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