'Prakash ka Stambha': Who is UP's new LoP Mata Prasad Pandey?

Mata Prasad Pandey contested his first election from Itwa in 1980 as a Janta Party candidate.

Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly’s Monsoon session, Samajwadi Party leader Mata Prasad Pandey has been named the Leader of Opposition.

The post was vacant as SP chief Akhilesh Yadav quit the Assembly to retain the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat he won in the recent Lok Sabha polls.

Who is Mata Prasad Pandey?

Pandey (81) is seven-term MLA from Itwa in eastern UP’s Sidharthanagar district. The veteran Brahmin leader has served as Speaker of the Assembly for two terms. He was the Speaker during the tenure of the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led government in 2004. He again became the Speaker when Akhilesh led the SP to power in 2012.

According to reports, Pandey contested his first election from Itwa in 1980 as a Janta Party candidate. In 1985, he again won from there but as a Lok Dal candidate. In1989,  he won it on a Janata Dal ticket. He was elected on an SP ticket for the first time in 2002. He retained  Itwa in 2007 and 2012 but he lost in 2017 to BJP leader S C Dwivedi, who went on to become a state minister. Pandey again regained the seat in 2022 by defeating Dwivedi.

Steering the SP through the five-day Monsoon Session is Pandey’s first task. The state government will table supplementary demands for grants on Tuesday.

“This government has given only problems to people of the state, thus there is no dearth of issues to raise. There is the problem of law and order at the top, unemployment, problems of students, farmers etc. We will fight for all these issues and raise them in the Assembly,” Pandey told Indian Express.

Spesaking to Indian express, Akhilesh described Pandey as a “prakash ka stambha (pillar of light)””. According to the SP chief, Akhilesh Pandey  “has the long experience of knowing, understanding and making others follow healthy traditions at the Vidhan Sabha”. The former CM  said Pandey’s experience would not only help SP MLAs but also the Speaker, the Chief Minister, and other ministers and MLAs.

Meanwhile, former state minister and Kanth MLA Kamal Akhtar was named the chief whip of Samajwadi Party in the Assembly and Rakesh Kumar Verma, MLA from Raniganj became the deputy whip.