Political parties wary of facing UP byelections

Political parties in Uttar Pradesh seem wary of facing byelections before the 2017 Assembly elections.

The cross voting in the Vidhan Parishad and the Rajya Sabha elections held earlier this month had led to the expulsion of 17 MLAs from Samajwadi Party, Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party and BJP but none of the parties, except for BSP, have yet filed a petition before the Speaker seeking the disqualification of their legislators.

After the Rajya Sabha and Vidhan Parishad elections, the Samajwadi Party had expelled Guddu Pandit, Mukesh Sharma, Nawazish Alam and Shyam Prakash. Rampal Yadav had been expelled by the party earlier. The Congress also expelled six legislators — Sanjay Jaiswal, Madhuri Varma, Vijay Dubey, Dr Mohd Muslim, Dilnawaz Khan and Nawab Kazim Ali.

The BSP had initiated action against Rajesh Tripathi, Bala Prasad Awathi, Romi Sahni and Brijesh Kumar while the BJP expelled its MLA Vijay Bahadur Yadav for cross voting.

The BSP, however, on Wednesday filed a petition seeking disqualification of Swami Prasad Maurya, who had quit the party after sensational allegations against supremo Mayawati.

“The BSP petition against Mr Maurya is because he levelled allegations against Ms Mayawati but the party is not keen on pursuing the case against other MLAs”, said a party leader.

All these parties have not filed petitions seeking disqualification of their legislators because they do not wish to face byelections on the eve of Assembly polls.