Breather till budget for lax SP MLAs

Lucknow: Here is good news for the non-performing MLAs and ministers in the ruling Samajwadi Party. They would be shown the exit doors only after the last assembly session when the supplementary budget is also passed.
The government will table its last supplementary budget in the monsoon session, most probably by the end of August, and get it passed for developmental works.
The Samajwadi Party is gearing up for the 2017 assembly elections and has already announced tickets for nearly 160 seats which the party had lost in 2012 polls. The party leadership has made up its mind that being a sitting MLA does not mean a guaranteed ticket for 2017 assembly elections and one's winnability criterion is being assessed on different layers of the party's mechanisim.
"The party will not take any risk of axing the tainted and controversial MLAs before the supplementary budget," divulged a senior functionary of the party and a powerful minister while speaking on the condition of anonymity.
He said the party leadership, through its internal mechanism, has information that a substantial number of MLAs would be denied tickets this time and fresh faces fielded to reduce the anti-incumbency against the sitting MLAs. The MLAs who faced criminal cases in the last four-and-a-half years and those who misbehaved with the government officials or respectable people in their constituency or faced serious charges of corruption or misappropriation of funds are most vulnerable.
Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is determined to take the field with fresh faces and stay away from those with criminal backgrounds as he has proved by forcing the party leadership to reverse its decision of the merger of Quami Ekta Dal with the Samajwadi Party.
Earlier, the chief minister had sacked half-a-dozen ministers for their non-performance.
Not only the chief minister, even party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, while addressing a function at the party headquarters on Friday, cautioned the workers and the MLAs of action against irregularities.
Apart from this, there are a good number of senior ministers who are not in the mood to contest the election this time and want to project young leadership. "This could be from within the Yadav family as well as outside too," predicted the senior party functionary.