Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is likely to retain his Lok Sabha seat from Azamgarh and may choose to quit as a member of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly. Akhilesh bagged the Karhal assembly seat in the recently held Uttar Pradesh assembly elections by defeating BJP candidate and union minister SP Singh Baghel. Yadav won by a margin of 67504 votes.
Akhilesh Yadav led the high-octane poll blitzkrieg of the Samajwadi Party during the UP elections that the party contested in alliance with regional parties like Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal and OP Rajbhar’s SBSP. While the Samajwadi Party managed to increase its vote share and number of seats, it was just not enough for Yadav to become the state’s chief minister yet again.
This was also the first time that Akhilesh contested the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. During his chief ministership, he was a member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council. The Karhal seat comes under the Mainpuri district considered to be a bastion of the Samajwadi Party. SP leader Sobaran Singh Yadav had bagged the seat in 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017. If Akhilesh Yadav resigns, a bypoll will be necessitated to fill the vacancy. Resignation from the Karhal seat will mean that the Samajwadi Party will have to nominate any other MLA as the Leader of the Opposition in the assembly.
Various media repots including The Hindustan Times claimed that since the UP Election 2022 results are not in favour of the Samajwadi Party and it’s clear that SP is not forming a government, Akhilesh Yadav is more likely to represent the state in Parliament. The report claimed that an announcement will be made in the coming times.
While the BJP and its allies have bagged 273 seats in the Uttar Pradesh elections, the Samajwadi Party and its allied won 125 seats in the 402-member assembly.