LUCKNOW: In what is being seen as a realignment of political forces in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, a second BJP minister quit the Yogi government in as many days, while the party poached a couple of lawmakers from the Congress and the Samajwadi Party as also a former MLA from Akhilesh Yadav’s party.
A day after UP minister Swami Prasad Maurya created a flutter by putting in his papers, his colleague Dara Singh Chauhan followed suit on Wednesday. Speculation about his exit had started doing the rounds after Maurya left on Tuesday. Both are serial party-hoppers.
Chauhan was holding the environment and forest portfolio in the Yogi cabinet. He had last defected from the BSP to the BJP in 2015 and was soon appointed chairman of the state backward commission.
A sitting MLA from Madhuban in Mau district of eastern UP, Chauhan is a prominent leader from the Most Backward Classes (MBC). In his resignation latter to Governor Anandiben Patel, Chauhan accused the BJP government of ignoring Dalits and backwards and tampering with their reservation rights.
While Chauhan had yet to reveal his destination, Akhilesh tweeted his photograph with Chauhan, welcoming him to the SP fold and calling him an apostle of social justice.
For his part, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya urged both Maurya and Chauhan to reconsider their decisions.
“If any family member strays, it is very sad. I can only appeal... please don’t get on a sinking ship. Big brother Dara Singhji, please reconsider,” Maurya tweeted.
Chauhan hails from the Loniya-Rajput community, a sub-caste of the MBCs that constitutes 3% of UP’s population. They have clout in eastern UP. His joining the SP would strengthen Akhilesh’s efforts to bring non-OBCs on board to project his party as a rainbow of all castes. The Loniya-Rajput community is mainly concentrated in and around east UP districts of Ghazipur, Mau, Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Varanasi and Pratapgarh.
As for the BJP’s acquisitions of the day, sitting MLAs Naresh Saini (Congress) and Hari Om Yadav (SP), and former SP MLA Dharampal Singh joined the party on Wednesday. Both Saini and Yadav represent backward classes.
Serial party-hopper does it again
Dara Singh Chauhan represented the BSP in Rajya Sabha in 1996; SP in RS from 2000-2006; BSP again in Lok Sabha from 2009-2014; lost 2014 LS polls on BSP ticket before defecting to the BJP a year later.