The rebel Congress MLA from Raebareli Sadar, Aditi Singh, switched over to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday. The UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh called for a press conference in Lucknow and Singh joined the party at the venue.
The move is being seen as a setback to the Congress party which is already struggling to regain its lost political grounds in the State ahead of the 2022 UP polls.
The Rae Bareli seat is where the family of Aditi Singh has had its hold for nearly three decades. Her father, late Akhilesh Singh, was the Congress MLA here from 1993 till 2007 for the Congress, before winning as an Independent in 2007 after the Congress expelled him, and from the Peace Party in 2012. Aditi took over in 2017 by winning this seat on a Congress ticket.
The rebel Congress leader has been attacking Congress leadership on several issues, including the exodus by many senior leaders in the recent past. Speaking to news18 after Congress leader Jitin Prasada had switched over to BJP, Aditi had said, “One by one, all young and dynamic leaders are leaving the party. The leadership should introspect on the issue. I am sure Jitin Prasad has made a decision after doing much thinking. He has been a Union Minister at a young age and he is a dynamic leader. Congress’s loss is BJPs gain.”
Aditi Singh had earlier expressed her support to the BJP-led central government’s move to abrogate provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution that abrogated Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
The UP Congress had written to the Speaker seeking disqualification of Raebareli legislator Singh for defying the party whip and attending a special Assembly session organised by the Adityanath government last year to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Singh was absent from the party’s training session in Raebareli last October and was served a show-cause notice by the then CLP leader Ajay Kumar Lallu.
However, Assembly Speaker Hriday Narayan Dikshit had quashed the party’s plea against Aditi Singh.
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