Samajwadi Party MLA Manoj Kumar Pandey resigns as chief whip in UP Assembly

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party MLA Manoj Kumar Pandey on Tuesday resigned from the post of party chief whip a day after he skipped a meeting called by party chief Akhilesh Yadav on the Rajya Sabha elections.

Voting was under way in the elections for the 10 Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday with eight BJP candidates and three from the Samajwadi Party in the fray.

In a letter to Yadav, the SP leader said, "You had appointed me as chief whip of Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh Assembly. I am resigning as the chief whip. Kindly accept my resignation."

Pandey is an MLA from Unchahar constituency in Raebareli. He was a cabinet minister in the previous Akhilesh Yadav government.

As many as eight SP MLAs did not attend a meeting called by the Yadav on Monday.

A senior SP leader, requesting anonymity, said that the party chief had called a meeting to brief the MLAs about the voting process of the Rajya Sabha elections.

However, Pandey and seven other MLAs -- Mukesh Verma, Maharaji Prajapati, Pooja Pal, Rakesh Pandey, Vinod Chaturvedi, Rakesh Pratap Singh and Abhay Singh did not attend the meeting.

Speaking to PTI, SP's national spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary had admitted that eight MLAs did not attend the dinner and meeting called by Yadav. However, he did not name the MLAs.