Azam Khan, Shivpal skip SP MLAs' meet ahead of UP Assembly session

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Senior SP legislator Azam Khan and sulking socialist leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Sunday skipped the party MLAs' meet ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly session. Shivpal had earlier too skipped the party MLAs' meeting amid differences with his nephew and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav. Shivpal had parted ways with Akhilesh in 2017 Assembly polls and had formed his own outfit, Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia. He contested this year's Assembly polls on the Samajwadi Party symbol.

Azam Khan, who was released for the Sitapur jail on Friday after the Supreme Court granted him bail in a cheating case, didn't attend the meeting due to health reasons, according to a party leader. However, Khan was seen visiting the district jail in Rampur with his son Abdullah Azam to meet his supporters lodged there in various cases. People close to Khan had earlier accused the party chief of ignoring him and the Muslim community, sparking speculations of a rift in the party.

Rumours about Azam Khan's unhappiness with the Samajwadi Party leadership were bolstered when he did not meet party MLA Ravidas Mehrotra in jail but a day later met Congress leader Pramod Krishnam there. However, Khan on Sunday said he is a "poor person" without any base and does not have any reason for being upset. "I am a man without any base, so where will the basis for resentment come from? I am a poor person now and live in a bylane. I am a poor person who lives in such a congested lane that not even a single four-wheeler could enter it," he told reporters in Rampur.

Earlier in the day, Samajwadi Party MLA Ravidas Mehrotra said Khan could not attend the meeting due some health issues. "Both Azam Khan and his son Abdullah will be attending the session tomorrow. Azam will sit on the left of Akhilesh Yadav and raise issues," he said. About the absence of Shivpal, Mehrotra said, "Though he won on the SP election symbol, he is the head of a party. Earlier also, he had not attended a meeting." At the meeting, Akhilesh Yadav asked party MLAs to raise issues of public interest.

"We have to play a role of strong opposition. As this will be the budget session, our party will strongly put issues the common man is facing," SP leader Rajpal Kashyap told PTI. Addressing party workers, Akhilesh Yadav said the state has gone backwards in every field under the BJP rule. All promises of the BJP have turned out to be false, he said. "The BJP government had promised to reduce the electricity bill by half but it is the electricity supply that has been reduced to half," he said.

The SP chief said his party’s previous government had provided electricity to weavers at a fixed rate while the BJP is doing injustice to them. "Houses of the poor are being demolished with bulldozers. Innocent people are being framed in false cases. The BJP government is harassing the opposition parties, especially workers and leaders of the Samajwadi Party, by lodging fake cases after the assembly elections," Akhilesh Yadav said. The SP chief also said people are devastated due to the policies of the BJP.

"Animals are grazing crops of farmers. The maximum number of cows have died under the BJP government. Medical colleges are ruined and there is neither doctor nor medicine there. A patient is compelled to wander from one place to another for treatment," he alleged. In the past five years, the BJP government has only encouraged corruption, Akhilesh said in a statement. The BJP government has done nothing except to declare the works of the Samajwadi government as its own, he said. Yadav said even the Gyanvapi issue is being raised to mislead people."The RSS-BJP governments refrain from works of public interest and promote hatred so that people do not live in harmony," he said.