RS polls: ‘Betrayal’ of trusted Akhilesh aide, SP Brahmin face Manoj Pandey

The Samajwadi Party (SP) was dealt a huge blow on Tuesday even before the election to the 10 vacant Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh got underway, after its chief whip Manoj Kumar Pandey resigned from his post.

To make matters worse, six more SP MLAs cross-voted in the election, leading to the loss of the SP’s third candidate.

Seen as a Brahmin face of the party, Pandey joined the SP’s youth wing in the late 1990s and rose up the ranks to emerge as one of the most trusted aides of party chief Akhilesh Yadav. He was preferred over other senior leaders as the party’s chief whip in the Assembly.

A three-time MLA from Unchahar Assembly segment, which falls under the Raebareli parliamentary seat, the 55-year-old had briefly joined the BJP in the early 2000s. However, he returned to the SP fold ahead of the 2007 Assembly elections, and was back in its good books.

After the Akhilesh-led SP government came to power in 2012, he was made a minister of state for agriculture two years later. He was subsequently elevated to Cabinet rank.

SP insiders said Pandey’s exit will also hurt the party as he was seen as one of the reasons for senior leader and OBC face Swami Prasad Maurya quitting the party. Sources said Akhilesh had overlooked repeated complaints against Pandey by Maurya, who accused the party of betraying its avowed commitment towards backwards while exiting the party.

The rivalry between them is old. In the 2012 Assembly polls, when he won Unchahar for the first time, Pandey had defeated Maurya’s son and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Utkrisht.

In 2017, when the SP and Congress contested the Assembly polls in alliance, Pandey had insisted on contesting the from Unchahar, despite the seat being promised to the Congress. He