Sitapur: “Jheen babu ke samman mein, Rampal maidan mein” is the slogan that reverberates at the Sevta Assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district.
Mahendra Singh, also known as Jheen Babu, and Rampal Yadav are rebel Samajwadi Party (SP) MLAs who had been denied tickets by party president and state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. Jheen Babu is a four-term sitting MLA from Sevta while Rampal Yadav is the SP MLA from Mehmoodabad.
Jheen Babu decided not to contest elections this time and has given his seat to Rampal Yadav, who is contesting on a Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) ticket.
“We want to avenge the humiliation that has been meted out to us by Akhilesh Yadav... Our purpose is to defeat the chief minister,” said Jheen Babu.
Rampal Yadav, who was earlier expelled from the party on land-grabbing charges, said “We will defeat Akhilesh, not the Samajwadis Party. Our leader continues to be Mulayam Singh Yadav and we are even using his photograph on our posters. The Samajwadi Party, in any case, is an offshoot of the Lok Dal, which means it is homecoming for us”.
The two leaders, in their speech, remind voters that Akhilesh Yadav is stubborn and did not even accept his father’s list of 38 candidates, while giving away 105 seats to the Congress.
“Akhilesh has proved his lack of capability in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Had he not managed things, even his wife Dimple Yadav would have lost from Kannauj,” says Rampal Yadav.
