Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party members on Monday clashed in the Lok Sabha over the issue of alleged manhandling of SP MP Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow recently.
Raising the issue, Mr. Yadav said he was detained by the police on March 8 while his party activists were manhandled.
BSP, on the other hand, claimed that the police had taken precautionary measures following the SP leader’s advise to his partymen that they would have to “shed blood” to get ticket for the next year’s assembly polls.
Mr. Yadav demanded that the matter be referred to the Privileges Committee of the Lok Sabha as he was bundled into a car and taken to the district jail.
He said while being taken to jail, his securitymen were not allowed to accompany him. “Their mobile phones were confiscated and they were detained at the Cantonment police station,” Mr. Yadav said.
NDA Convenor and JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav supported the SP’s demand to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee.
But BSP members opposed the demand saying the issue of law and order was a state subject and should not be raised in Parliament.
“It is, therefore, not an issue which can be referred to the Privileges Committee,” BSP leader in the Lok Sabha Dara Singh Chauhan said.
He claimed that during SP’s recent conclave in Gorakhpur, party leaders had asked the activists to shed blood if they wanted tickets for elections.
Mr. Chauhan said this had led to the police deployment as a precautionary measure. He also claimed that pictures of a senior police officer beating an SP worker could be morphed.
All the while, SP members kept showing the photographs of a senior IPS officer beating up an SP activist.
