Lucknow: A political storm has erupted over BJP MP Nishikant Dubey accusing Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav of links with Ram temple donation theft accused Ramashankar Yadav alias Tinnu Yadav.Not only has the SP sent a legal notice to Dubey but is also mulling to take up the issue in the Parliament, if needed.The notice, sent on Tuesday by the party’s Lawyers Wing state president KK Pal, accuses the BJP MP of defamation, character assassination and publishing malicious content against Akhilesh Yadav.In related developments, SP functionaries on Tuesday submitted complaints at Hazratganj police station in Lucknow and Friends Colony police station in Etawah seeking FIRs against Dubey and social media user Saravanaprasad Balasubramanian.In Lucknow, the complaint was filed by SP spokesperson Manoj Singh Kaka and Lohia Vahini national vice-president Ankur Pandey.On Tuesday, Akhilesh, while addressing a news conference, announced that legal action will follow against Dubey if he did not take off the social media post linking him with Tinnu Yadav within the next 10 minutes.Akhilesh said as an MP, his privilege was on a par with that of the ruling party MP (apparently referring to Dubey) and that action will be initiated against him if he did not take down the post.Akhilesh described the allegations as baseless and said the BJP had made a mistake by relying on people whose ‘personal record has historically been discredited’.The SP chief said such individuals were being used merely as ‘loudspeakers’ to spread lies. “They neither have a voice nor ideas of their own. They are merely instruments in the hands of others. They have no personal credibility,” Akhilesh said.The sequence of events began on July 5 when Nishikant Dubey, the BJP MP from Godda Lok Sabha seat in Jharkhand shared a post on X by one Saravannaprasad Balasubramaniam citing a ‘supposed’ police probe and call records to claim that Tinnu Yadav was in contact with Akhilesh.“Wasn’t Tinnu talking to Tipu?” Dubey wrote on X quoting Saravanna’s post.Shortly after Dubey’s post, former SP MLA from Ayodhya Pawan Pandey released a video stating that the BJP, RSS and VHP were now spreading fake news by claiming that Akhilesh had spoken to Tinnu Yadav.“It is an open challenge. If there is proof of any phone conversation between Akhilesh and Tinnu Yadav, produce it. Otherwise, publicly apologise to Akhilesh Yadav,” Pandey said.
