Akhilesh Yadav, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and his wife, Dimple Yadav, a candidate for the Samajwadi Party in Mainpuri, arrived in Saifi on Monday to vote in the tense by-election for the coveted Lok Sabha seat that his father Mulayam Singh Yadav once held. Akhilesh Yadav gave a press conference after casting his ballot in which he accused the administration of electoral fraud and claimed it was acting at the direction of the winning party.
The Samajwadi Party president slammed the Yogi Adityanath government and said the police had been briefed not to allow SP workers to vote in Mainpuri, Rampur constituencies. “Police had been deployed to stop party supporters from coming to our meeting…Central forces have been deployed but are being guided by local police,” said Yadav as he alleged the UP police “is biased and misleading central forces”.
Further criticising Raghuraj Singh Shakya, he claimed that the BJP hired an SP candidate since they lacked a candidate in Mainpuri. He expressed confidence in holding the seat from which his wife is running by saying, “We will win in Mainpuri since Netaji worked for Mainpuri.