Inflicting an immense shock to the Congress and bringing exuberance to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the Uttar Pradesh, the disgruntled former Union Minister of State for Steel Akhilesh Das, who resigned from Congress four days ago, has joined BSP on Saturday.
His resignation is not a good sign for the Congress considering the next year's Lok Sabha elections as following him 14 Congress corporators also resigned from the party after showing loyalty to their local leader.
Das was passionately inducted by the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh into her party and has been awarded with the BSP's national general secretary. Besides Das, former MLC and AICC member Siraj Mehndi and some of his supporters also joined BSP.
Apart from that the BSP supremo and the State Chief Minister Mayawati announced that the veteran Congress leader will fight next year's Lok Sabha elections as party's candidate from the Lucknow parliamentary seat.
Reacting to the Das move, official sources from the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) said that the LMC was planning to seek legal opinion in relation to the fresh status of corporators. If all the corporators or majority of them joins the BSP camp, the Congress party could seek legal action against them as they fall in the ambit of the anti-defection law, since they had contested on the party's symbol.
However, sources say the move to seek legal opinion does not hold ground as the corporators do not fall under the ambit of anti-defection law. A municipal official said that the corporators did not contest on party tickets though they might appear to do so.
Other municipal officials also said that since anyone could contest municipal elections, so the corporators did not fall in the ambit of the anti-defection law.
Four days ago on Tuesday, the veteran Congress leader Akhilesh Das had resigned from the Congress as well as the Rajya Sabha accusing coterie around Rahul Gandhi. Das said that the Congress party revolves around a single person and he had no more faith in the Congress party.
However, the Congress gives another explanation for the rash act of Das and linked it to the incident at the backdrop of recently dropping him from the Union Council of Ministers.
Congress also said the resignation of 14 corporators also did not come as a surprise to the party as they were not distributed tickets by the party. Das himself had distributed tickets to his obliged loyalists and the party showing faith to him had just approved his decision.
Akhilesh Das, an active politician was working especially in Amethi, which Rahul Gandhi represents as Parliamentarian. His firm ground there might hit adversely the Congress.
The experts are of the view that Akhilesh Das brought sudden happiness for the Mayawati, who has been going through tension owing to Rahul Gandhi's increasing Dalit love, which might divert some Dalit voters from her party. Rahul Gandhi's recent four days visit to Bundelkhand region had badly irked the Chief Minister Mayawati.
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