Lucknow, Jul 15 (UNI) In a big setback for Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP), former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar's son and Rajya Sabha MP Neeraj Shekhar resigned from membership of the upper house of the parliament and the party on Monday. His term of the Rajya Sabha ends on November 25, 2020. Shekhar is likely to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu accepted the resignation. Shekhar said he has resigned voluntarily and not under any compulsion.
Samajwadi party sources said, the party's Legislative Council Member Ravi Shankar Pappu, nephew of late prime minister and cousin of Neeraj Shekhar is also likely to resign from the membership of the upper house of the UP Legislature and join the BJP. He was elected to the UP Legislative council in January 2016 on the Samajwadi Party ticket from the local body’s constituency. His term ends in January 2021.
Sources said the BJP has promised Neeraj Shekhar to nominate him as its candidate for the byelection to the Rajya Sabha seat caused by his resignation. Since the BJP has the brute majority in UP assembly his re-election is a foregone conclusion. Sources said the BJP has also promised him another term after his term ends in November 2020.
The relations of Neeraj Shekhar with the SP president Akhilesh Yadav were strained for quite some time. Shekhar was demanding ticket from Balia Lok Sabha seat, a traditional seat of his family for the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. Akhilesh Yadav had also promised to him that if he is not given the ticket then his wife would be given the ticket by the party.
However SP chief ditched him and Sanatan Pandey was given the SP ticket from Ballia. Sources said Shekhar had then itself had decided to leave Samajwadi Party.
Shekhar contested for the first time after his father's death. In 2008, he was elected to the Parliament by winning the byelection from Balia which fell vacant after the death of his father. In 2009 Lok Sabha polls he won again from the same constituency.
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