Akhilesh Yadav urged the MLAs to change sides to form a new government in the state

Akhilesh Yadav: Amid speculation of a rift in the Uttar Pradesh BJP, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav in a cryptic post on Thursday asked ruling party MLAs to switch sides to form a new government in the state. The former chief minister said “Monsoon ka offer: Sau Lao, Sarkar Banao.” Though Yadav did not name anyone in his post, a senior SP leader, on condition of anonymity, said it was a message to those in the BJP who are disgruntled with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and want to switch sides. “The SP has won 111 seats in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and if we get the support of 100 disgruntled BJP MLAs, we will easily form the government,” the SP leader said. Speculation of a rift in the BJP’s state unit was fuelled by Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya’s post on Instagram on Wednesday in which he said the party is bigger than the government. He also urged all ministers, MLAs and public representatives to respect party workers. Maurya had met BJP president J P Nadda in Delhi on Tuesday, but neither the BJP nor the deputy chief minister said anything about the meeting. There have been talks of a souring of relations between Maurya and Adityanath for a long time. In private, many BJP leaders of the state, including those who lost in the Lok Sabha elections, have been criticising the chief minister’s style of functioning and citing it as one of the reasons for their defeat.