Lucknow: Two former members of Parliament — one from the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and one from Samajwadi Party (SP) — two former ministers in the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government in Uttar Pradesh, and an SP leader who had fought the 2019 Lok Sabha elections against Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, were among 18 politicians to join the Bharatiya Janata Party Monday.
Monday’s inductions come a week after former UP MLA Dara Singh Chauhan switched sides, to join the BJP from the SP.
The 18 new inductions in UP comprised 11 from the SP, five from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and one each from the Congress and the RLD.
The new members were welcomed to the party by UP deputy chief ministers Brajesh Pathak and Keshav Maurya, and BJP’s UP state president Bhupendra Chaudhary.
The two former MPs inducted were Rajpal Saini from the RLD and Anshul Verma from the SP, while the two former ministers inducted were Sahab Singh Saini and Jagdish Sonkar.
Apart from them, two former SP MLAs joined the BJP’s ranks — Sushma Patel and Gulab Saroj.
One of the key leaders to join the BJP fold Monday was Shalini Yadav, daughter-in-law of the late Shyamlal Yadav, a former Congress MP from Varanasi and deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
Shalini had fought the Varanasi mayoral election in 2017 for the Congress and was the runner-up. Ahead of the 2019 general election, she joined the SP and fought against PM Modi from the Varanasi constituency.
Others to have joined the BJP Monday, include a former state Congress media chairman, former assembly aspirants from BSP and other parties.
The new inductions are part of the BJP’s continuing OBC and SC outreach in UP ahead of the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections, according to political observers.
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4 OBC leaders and 3 SC leaders
While four of the new joinees — Yadav, Rajpal Saini, Sahab Singh Saini and Patel — are from the other backward class (OBC) category, Verma, Sonkar and Saroj are from the Scheduled Caste (SC) category.
Having started his political career with the BSP, Rajpal Saini was elected as an MLA from the party in 2002 and was sent to the Rajya Sabha in 2010. He later joined the RLD where he served as the national president of the Samajik Nyay Manch, a social justice platform.
Sahab Singh Saini, a two-time SP MLA and a former minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government, joined the BJP along with his supporters. Saini had formed the Rashtriya Krantikari Morcha in 2022 in Uttarakhand, before returning to active politics in UP’s Saharanpur.
Sushma Patel also started her career with the BSP and was elected as an MLA from Mungra Badshahpur seat in Jaunpur in 2017. She had switched to the SP last year.
Sonkar was denied a ticket by the SP for the 2022 UP elections, leading to protests and resignations from his loyalists. He had earlier won the Shahganj assembly seat twice in 2002 and 2007, and later went on to win the Machhlishahr constituency in 2012 and 2017.
Verma, a BJP member till 2019, had made news for handing over his resignation to a security guard deployed at the BJP’s Lucknow office. He joined the SP ahead of the general elections that year after being denied a ticket by the BJP for the same. Verma had in 2014 won the Lok Sabha election for the BJP from Hardoi seat.
Like Sonkar, Saroj too was denied a ticket by the SP from the Kerakat constituency in UP in 2022.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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