Lucknow, Jul 4: On Sunday, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav dissolved all party posts except that of the Uttar Pradesh unit chief, the party announced.
In a tweet, the Samajwadi Party said Yadav had dissolved all the posts including the national presidents and state chiefs of all cells, state and district executive wings, youth and women outfits, and other party departments.
Although the reason is not given, the decision can be seen as an attempt to revamp the party after the recent by-polls in Azamgarh and Rampur. "The party is gearing up for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the focus is to strengthen the organization to take on the BJP with full force," a senior party leader told news agency PTI. BJP's Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ defeated the former UP chief minister's cousin and SP candidate Dharmendra Yadav by 8,679 votes in Azamgarh. The BJP candidate secured 3,12,768 votes while the SP candidate got 3,04,089 votes. The Lok Sabha seat was earlier represented by Akhilesh Yadav who had resigned from the post after being elected to the Karhal assembly seat. Rampur, the bastion of SP heavyweight Azam Khan, was also wrested by the BJP. The saffron party candidate Ghanshyam Lodhi defeated SP's candidate Asim Raja by a comfortable margin of 42,192 votes in the direct contest.
Akhilesh had hit out at the BJP after the bypoll setbacks in both the seats. "This victory of the BJP is the victory of dishonesty, deceit, disregard for democracy and constitution, coercion, hooliganism by the administration, the 'Dhritarashtra' vision of the Election Commission, and hijacking of the public mandate by BJP's 'Kaurav' army. Democracy is bleeding and the public mandate lost," news agency PTI had quoted the Samajwadi Party chief.