Uttar Pradesh: Wife And Father Of Samajwadi Party MLA Abhay Singh, Who Cross-Voted In Rajya Sabha Election, Join BJP

The wife and father of Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA from Ayodhya's Goshaiganj Abhay Singh joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday (22 April) in presence of Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak.

The joining of Sarita Singh and Bakhsh Singh comes months after the SP MLA Abhay Singh cross-voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha elections held earlier this year.

He defended his move by saying, "I voted where I should have." Notably, he was then provided a Y-category security by the Narendra Modi government on 22 March.

Singh's relations with SP national president and former UP CM Akhilesh Yadav started deteriorating when the latter refused Ram Mandir's invite and the former went to visit the temple along with other UP MLAs.

Singh was in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) earlier but then won the 2012 Assembly election on an SP ticket. He lost in 2017 to BJP's Indra Pratap aka Khubbu Tiwari, but won again in 2022.

He is also said to be a distant relative of former Prime Minister V P Singh. He was also known to be the right hand of now-dead gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari.