Lucknow, July 29 (IANS): The Samajwadi Party on Sunday named veteran leader and former Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey as the new Leader of Opposition in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.

Pandey, 81, who hails from the Brahmin community, is a seven-time legislator and served as the Speaker of the Assembly twice - in 2004-07 and 2012-17.

Presently the legislator from Itwa constituency in Siddarthnagar district, he is considered close to party President Akhilesh Yadav, who he succeeds as the Leader of the Opposition. Akhilesh Yadav was elected from the Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency in the recent polls and decided to retain the parliamentary seat, resigning his Assembly seat.

First elected to the UP Assembly in 1980, Pandey was re-elected in the 1985, 1989, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2022 polls. He served as Minister of Health in the first Mulayam Singh Yadav government in 1991, and as Labour and Employment Minister in his third government (2003-07).

In his remarks after being made Leader of Opposition, Pandey said his priority will be to corner the government. He said that they had appealed to the government the extend the duration of the Assembly session, which begins on Monday. "Our efforts will be to get the session extended so we can raise issues of public interest," he said, accusing the Yogi Adityanath government of bringing the state to near ruin. "We will seek to pin down the government on issues like corruption and other matters," he said.

Apart from Pandey, the Samajwadi Party, in a meeting chaired by Akhilesh Yadav, named Amroha MLA Mehboob Ali as President of the party legislative board, Kamal Akhtar as Chief Whip and Rakesh Kumar aka R.K Verma as the Deputy Whip.

Several names for the posts were discussed at length during the meeting of Samajwadi Party legislators and in the end, they left the final decision to Akhilesh Yadav. Subsequently, Pandey was chosen as the Leader of the Opposition.