In a big blow to the BJP and Yogi Adityanath just before the Uttar Pradesh election, 5 leave the BJP to join Akhilesh Yadav, SP.
Causing a big loss to the BJP and Yogi Adityanath just before the Uttar Pradesh election, a minister and four MLAs quit today and joined Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav. Swami Prasad Maurya, a top minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, posted his resignation letter on Twitter.
Even before his letter was openly shared on Social Media, Swami Prasad Maurya met with Akhilesh Yadav and joined the Samajwadi Party. In the hours that followed, four more MLAs close to him – Roshan Lal Verma, Brijesh Prajapati, Bhagwati Sagar, and Vinay Shakya – announced their resignations.
Swami Prasad Maurya, a powerful OBC (Other Backward Class) leader and five-time MLA, joined the BJP in 2016 after quitting Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). He was central to the BJP’s plans to draw a critical section of OBC voters to counter Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.
The other three defectors have traveled the same route as Mr. Maurya – from the BSP to the BJP to Samajwadi Party and their departure came as Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath and top BJP leaders met in Delhi to discuss their election strategy.
“Despite a divergent ideology, I worked with dedication in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet. But because of the grave oppression of Dalits, OBCs, farmers, unemployed and small businessmen, I am resigning,” Mr Maurya wrote in the stinging resignation letter.
He also told reporters: “What impact my exit will have on the BJP will be obvious after the 2022 assembly election.”
As his letter emerged on Twitter, Akhilesh Yadav tweeted a photograph with Mr Maurya, welcoming him and his supporters to the Samajwadi Party.
The exits reinforced the view that resentment in the ranks against Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is an issue the BJP has left unaddressed.
Mr Maurya’s decision has been ongoing for months and sources report that two months ago, he had complained to Union Home Minister Amit Shah about Yogi Adityanath. But nothing reportedly came of it.
Sources say Amit Shah has assigned Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya with persuading Mr. Maurya and his supporters to return.
Keshav Prasad Maurya’s initial appeal went public and said, “I don’t know why Swami Prasad Maurya quit but I appeal to him, don’t quit but let us talk. Decisions taken in haste can backfire,” he said in a tweet that did not move the defectors.
Swami Prasad Maurya responded by saying, “Why did (Keshav Maurya) not think of this earlier? Why is he remembering me today? Right now everyone will talk but when dialogue was needed, they did not have time.”
While the sudden exits may have shocked the BJP, jubilation poured in, in the opposition camp and one of its key players, Sharad Pawar, weighed in.
Mr Maurya will take more than a dozen leaders with him, said the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader while announcing a joint campaign with Akhilesh Yadav in UP. “Change is coming to UP. Today Maurya has resigned and 13 MLAs are going with him. In the coming days, you will see and more people will quit,” he said in Mumbai.
The exits in Lucknow began as Yogi Adityanath and top BJP leaders arrived in Delhi to discuss Uttar Pradesh’s election strategy.
Mr Maurya is the MLA from Padrauna in eastern Uttar Pradesh. His daughter Sanghamitra is a BJP MP from UP.
Last year, another influential OBC face and BJP ally, Om Prakash Rajbhar, had joined the Samajwadi Party. People ask, “Rats abandoning a sinking ship?” Yogi Adityanath’s politics of polarities ruling with a draconian iron rod has not come across well to the public as well, with the COVID crisis where people could not afford wood to cremate their dead on funeral pyres so bodies were thrown in the Ganga, a dreadful oxygen crisis where journalists were arrested for reporting it, and the brutality of rape-murders of Dalit girls, which the government tried to conceal, such as the horrific Hathras murder.
While people surmise the MPs tickets were cut which was why they are deserting ship, sources have revealed that many have been disrespected by Yogi including Swami Prasad Maurya and there is a wave of dissatisfaction going on with rumors through the grapevine that more than 50 Sitting MLAs to leave BJP in UP, and a big revolt coming up!
Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically vital state, votes from February 10 in seven rounds in an election widely seen as a semifinal of sorts before the national election of 2024. The results will be declared on March 10.