Abhishek to start rural campaign
A distance of 3500 km will be travelled and 3 lakh party leaders and workers will be involved in the programme. Contacts will be made with more than one crore people through digital platform.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) suffered a major setback ahead of the Lok Sabha elections as former Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MP Ravi Prakash Verma resigned from the party on Friday.
Ravi Verma, national general secretary of the SP, is regarded as a strong Kurmi leader with a strong influence in the Lakhimpur Kheri district, which has a 35 per cent OBC vote out of the 50 lakh population.
In the letter he sent to the party president on Thursday night, he cited the ongoing internal activities of the SP in Lakhimpur Kheri as a reason for his resignation.
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Speculation is that Ravi Prakash Verma could join the Congress as the Congress committee is ready to induct him into the party.
Verma represented the Kheri parliamentary seat twice as a Member of Parliament (MP) and as a Rajya Sabha MP once. In January 2023, he was appointed national general secretary of the SP for the third time by national president Akhilesh Yadav, but after a few months, his rift with the SP came to the fore. Since then, speculation has been going on that Ravi Verma might leave SP before the Lok Sabha elections.
Verma’s mother, Usha Verma, was also an MP from 1984 to 1989. After that, Ravi Verma was elected Lok Sabha MP from 1998 to 2024 and Rajya Sabha member from 2014 to 2020.
Purvi Verma, daughter of Ravi Prakash Verma, had also contested Lok Sabha elections from the Kheri parliamentary seat on an SP ticket in 2019 but had to face defeat from sitting BJP MP Ajay Mishra.
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