Cross-party defections up anxiety in poll-bound UP

SAMBHAL/AGRA/MEERUT/PILIBHIT: A spate of high profile resignations cutting across political parties has both riled and made the top leaderships an anxious lot. Causing a vertical split in the ranks of SP in Moradabad, veteran leader and four time Lok Sabha member Shafiqur Rahman Barq on Saturday announced that his grandson Ziaur Rahman Barq has joined the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Asaduddin Owaisi.
Barq had expressed displeasure at his grandson being denied the ticket for Sambhal assembly seat, which had instead gone to five-term SP MLA and state cabinet minister Iqbal Mehmood. There was another crisis brewing in Agra as five prominent SP members, including three sitting MLAs from Etah, Firozabad and Sitapur, quit the party on Saturday and announced their decision to contest elections as Independents or under the Lok Dal banner. All these members — Ashish Yadav, Ramveer Yadav and Rampal Yadav — are perceived to be close to Akhilesh’s estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav. Rampal Yadav, the MLA from Biswan seat in Sitapur, said he will contest as a Lok Dal candidate “from a place where the Samajwad started”.
He added that though he had been a two time MLA from Biswan, he was denied a ticket. “Akhilesh Yadav is overconfident. No one can expect anything from him as he ditched his own father,” he said. Not that the BJP was left untouched by defections and revolt. A day after Kairana MP Hukum Singh projected his daughter as the party’s candidate from Kairana, senior member Anil Chauhan left the organisation and joined RLD along with his supporters. He was promptly granted an RLD ticket. In Pilibhit, Swami Pravaktanand, a close aide of Union minister Maneka Gandhi, filed his nomination from the Barkhera assembly seat as an RLD candidate. He alleged that BJP leaders were “openly selling party tickets like businessmen.”
(With inputs from Nazar Abbas, Anuja Jaiswal, Sandeep Rai, and Keshav Agarwal)