Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav and party founder Azam Khan on Tuesday resigned from the Lok Sabha.
Akhilesh Yadav handed over his resignation to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
Akhilesh Yadav and Azam Khan resigned from the Lower House after winning the recently held Uttar Pradesh elections from the Karhal and Rampur Assembly seats respectively. Both the leaders have apparently decided to retain their Assembly seats in a bid to give a boost to the party in Uttar Pradesh.
The Samajwadi Party had won five Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general elections. The party's strength will be reduced to three after the resignations are accepted by the Speaker.
According to Samajwadi Party sources, Akhilesh Yadav will lead the party in the state and play the role of opposition leader in the UP Assembly.
Azam Khan has been slapped with a number of cases by the UP government on charges of land grab among others. He is in jail currently.
The decision of the SP leaders also appears to be influenced by the decimation of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which won just one Assembly seat in the 2022 state polls.
Former CM Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party came a distant second in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, securing 111 constituencies, seeing a massive increase from 47 in 2017, and getting 32.06 per cent votes.
( With inputs from ANI )
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