Congress expels six UP MLAs for cross-voting in RS poll

The Congress on Tuesday expelled six of its legislators in Uttar Pradesh for voting for other party candidates in the Rajya Sabha elections.

These six are Sanjay Pratap Jaiswal from Basti district, Madhuri Verma from Behrai, Vijay Dubey from Kushinagar, Muhammad Muslim from Amethi, Dilnawaz Khan from Bulandshahr and Kazim Ali Khan from Rampur.

Party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi made the announcement along with state in charge Ghulam Nabi Azad at party headquarters here.

"Three of these six MLAs cross-voted for the BJP while the other three for BSP," said Azad.

He added that four MLAs of the state's ruling Samajwadi Party and four of the Bahujan Samaj Party also voted for Bharatiya Janata Party candidates who used all measures available to secure the victory of their candidate.

"Any candidate needed 34.5 or 35 votes to win the Rajya Sabha seat from UP. With 41 MLAs, BJP had fielded the second candidate too who was 27 votes short of the mark. They used money power, muscle power and many other measures which are even unheard off to influence our people," Azad said.

He said that since all these six legislators had showed him the voting slip before polling, the party had evidence against them.

"I was the observer and they showed me their vote. So we have evidence and don't need to issue any show cause notice while expelling them from the primary membership of the party," Azad said.

"Seven of our MLAs cross voted in MLC elections. Since we don't have the credible evidence in that case, we are looking for the seventh person too," added Azad.

--IANS

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