A Samajwadi Party delegation led by Dhaurahra MP Anand Bhadauriya on Friday submitted a written complaint to the Lakhimpur police, alleging that a social media reel uploaded by a news group named 27 party MPs in an attempt to defame them.
Claiming that the reel was aimed at creating a narrative that the listed MPs were ready to defect from the party, Bhadauriya said it caused serious damage to the image of the public representatives named in it. He demanded stringent action against the news group concerned.
In his complaint to Kotwali Lakhimpur, he alleged that the social media content was deliberately circulated to tarnish the image of all the SP MPs, including himself.
“The post was intended to convey that these 27 MPs, including me, were set to defect from the SP. Each of these MPs has rubbished such claims and rumours spread by the BJP and its allies. Our contention is that the news group and the journalist named in the complaint cannot publish such baseless reports naming 27 MPs,” Bhadauriya told TOI.
The controversy over the mass defection of MPs erupted after deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and cabinet minister Om Prakash Rajbhar claimed that 25 to 26 SP MPs were ready to switch sides, predicting a major split in Akhilesh Yadav’s party. Of the 37 SP MPs in the Lok Sabha, more than 30 contacted independently by news groups dismissed the defection reports as a BJP diversionary tactic.
