After Defending Akhilesh, Yogi Minister’s Meeting With Shivpal Yadav Sets Rumour Mills Abuzz

Lucknow: Suhaildev Bahujan Samaj Party (SBSP) president and minister Om Prakash Rajbhar met Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Friday, setting tongues wagging in political circles.

Both the leaders called the 15-minute meeting in the Varanasi circuit house a courtesy call.
However, much is being read into the meet as the minister for disability and backward classes welfare is at loggerheads with his alliance partner, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and has been targeting the state government.

The meeting also assumed significance as the minister earlier defended former chief minister and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav over the damage to the bungalow that he vacated.

“I do not think Akhilesh Yadav would do anything like this … ripping off tiles and plucking off taps from bathrooms,” he said.

Rajbhar also said in his view, no politician of the stature of Akhilesh would do something like this.

Asked to comment on Akhilesh’s allegation that the chief minister’s OSD and a senior IAS officer had visited the vacated house before it was thrown open to the media, the minister said the question should be put to the current and former chief ministers.