UP Polls: Akhilesh Yadav, Raja 'Bhaiya' trade barbs over rigging allegations

Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya, sitting MLA from Kunda Constituency in Pratapgarh, who was once Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's ally, has turned latter's rival in 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections.

Akhilesh Yadav and Raja Bhaiya recently got into a war of words on Twitter. SP Chief took to his Twitter handle and shared a video alleging widespread rigging during the voting in the fifth phase of Assembly elections in the Kunda constituency.

Akhilesh even went ahead and demanded Election Commission take cognizance of the video and cancel the election of the particular constituency. However, in a while, the SP chief deleted the video. Retaliating to Akhilesh’s accusations, Raja 'Bhaiya' shared the screenshot of his tweet and claimed that the video shared by the SP chief is from 2019 elections in Haryana. Kunda MLA further slammed the SP president and said "hatred is not good in politics." Singh had won with a huge margin of 1.04 lakh votes in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. He remains undefeated from the constituency, winning the elections in 1993, 1996, 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017 as an Independent candidate. He had formed his own party Jansatta Dal Loktantrik in 2018.