Swami Prasad Maurya’s jump from BJP to SP hasn’t paid off, OBC leader trails in Fazilnagar

Maurya, an influential Other Backward Class (OBC) leader and five-time MLA, had also switched his constituency from Padrauna to Fazilnagar for this year’s polls.

Swami Prasad Maurya (left) with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav when he joined the party on 11 January | ANI

New Delhi: Swami Prasad Maurya, a former minister in Uttar Pradesh’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, who resigned and defected to the Samajwadi Party (SP) in January, is trailing in Fazilnagar by a margin of over 41,000 votes.

In the lead is BJP’s candidate Surendra Kumar Kushwaha, who had garnered over 1,07,010 votes (51.45 per cent), according to the Election Commission of India (ECI) website at 2 pm.

Maurya, an influential Other Backward Class (OBC) leader and five-time MLA, had switched his constituency from Padrauna to Fazilnagar for this year’s polls. The 68-year-old was believed to be facing stiff anti-incumbency in Padrauna, and the BJP had recruited former Congress leader and Union minister R.P.N. Singh — another OBC leader who represented the seat between 1996 and 2009 — to campaign for it in the constituency.

In Fazilnagar, according to estimates by political parties, the voting population includes 90,000 Muslims, 55,000 Maurya-Kushwahas, 50,000 Yadavs, 30,000 Brahmins, 40,000 Kurmi-Sainthwars, 30,000 Vaishyas, and about 80,000 Dalits.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) — banking on Muslim votes as well as its traditional Dalit  support base to defeat Maurya — fielded former SP leader Ilyas Ansari. The BJP, meanwhile, gave its ticket to Surendra Kushwaha, son of Fazilnagar’s sitting BJP MLA, Ganga Singh Kushwaha. 

With the BJP candidate being a fellow member of the Maurya-Kushwaha community, and the prospect of R.P.N. Singh rallying Kurmi-Sainthwar votes to him, experts had calculated that Maurya’s best chance lay with the SP’s Muslim-Yadav votebank — which the BSP’s Ansari threatened to split.

Who is Swami Prasad Maurya?

Maurya, known as a grassroots leader, was considered the major non-Yadav OBC face in Uttar Pradesh politics before the rise of Keshav Prasad Maurya, the current deputy chief minister and former state BJP chief. His Kushwaha community — which analysts estimate to make up about 6 per cent of the state’s population — is concentrated and influential in eastern UP. 

Swami Prasad, a five-time MLA, won his first two assembly electrons from Dalmau in Rae Bareli district and the last three from Padrauna. He began his political career as convener of the Yuva Lok Dal in the early 1980s, and had a stint in the Janata Dal before joining the BSP after Mayawati became chief minister in 1995. 

He was elected as a BSP MLA in 1996, and went on to serve as a minister in the BJP-supported Mayawati government in 1997. 

After losing a re-election in 2007, he was elected to the assembly from Padrauna in a 2009 bypoll. He handed over his former Dalmau seat — now renamed Unchahar — to his son, Utkrisht Maurya Ashok, who was, however, unable to win from the constituency in 2012 and 2017.

During his two decades in the BSP, Swami Prasad Maurya had served as its state president and national general secretary — and was considered Mayawati’s number 2. 

In what was considered a major shot in the arm for the BJP, Maurya — then leader of the opposition in the assembly — defected to the party in 2016 and was inducted by then-party president Amit Shah, ahead of the last assembly elections. 

He went on to serve as minister of labour, employment, coordination in the Yogi Adityanath government. His daughter, Sanghmitra Maurya, is a sitting BJP MP who was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2019. 

Maurya’s defection to the SP — among a spate of such defections this year ahead of the polls — had caused ripples in the BJP.

(Edited by Rohan Manoj)