LUCKNOW: Senior backward leader and cabinet minister in Yogi government, Swami Prasad Maurya, quit his post and claimed "difference in ideology" compelled him to part ways from the ruling dispensation.
However, Maurya did not reveal if he had resigned from the BJP as well. In the meantime, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav tweeted an undated photograph of him with Maurya welcoming him to the party fold. In his post, Akhilesh said: "We welcome the leader of social justice and equality in SP".
Later talking to the media persons, Maurya, a sitting MLA from Padrauna in Kushinagar, said he would reveal his future course of action on January 14. T
The development, significantly, came on a day when UP CM Yogi Adityanath along with deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, state BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, and other leaders are in New Delhi to take part in a meeting called by the party top brass to finalise the names of party candidates for the polls.
In his resignation letter, Maurya cited the state government’s attitude of "negligence" towards Dalits, Backward classes, farmers, youth, and small traders as the reason which pushed him to put in his papers. However, Maurya claimed that a few more sitting BJP MLAs, his close aides would follow the suit and quit the party.
Later, names of three sitting MLAs, Brijesh Prajapati, a close aide of Maurya and sitting BJP MLA from Tindwari, Bhagwati Sagar, MLA from Tilhar, Kanpur Dehat, and Roshan Lal Verma, sitting BJP MLA from Tilhar, cropped up as those likely to resign and join SP along with Swami Prasad Maurya. Even the Tilhar MLA Roshan Lal Verma took Maurya's resignation to Raj Bhawan.
Later in the day, Brijesh Prajapati tendered his resignation from the primary membership of the BJP. Speculations were rife about the likely resignations by Sagar and Verma and some more Maurya supporters. “The edge of my blow would be felt in the days to come with a series of resignations from the BJP,” said Maurya.
As per the sources, Swami Prasad Maurya had been in touch with the SP chief for the last six months. The two are also learned to have held a couple of rounds of talks to discuss the political fate of Maurya’s daughter Sanghmitra Maurya, who happens to be a BJP MP from Badaun. In the last 2019 Lok Sabha election, Sanghmitra had defeated Akhilesh’s cousin Dharmendra Yadav in Badaun.
When asked about the fate of Sanghmitra, Maurya said that relinquishing his ministerial post was his personal decision and not linked to any of his family members.
If the BJP insiders are to be believed, Maurya wanted to contest elections from a seat other than Padrauna in the forthcoming state polls. It is also believed that Maurya had been seeking tickets for his son Ashok and around two dozen of the candidates which the BJP top brass had been conspicuously silent.
Maurya and the three MLAs, in line of resignation, all have roots in BSP. They all had joined the BJP in 2016 ahead of 2017 assembly polls parting ways from the BSP.