Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 15: With the usual pre-election change-overs continuing unabated, the Samajwadi Party has decided to call a halt of turn-coats joining the party in Uttar Pradesh apparently because the tremors within the party.
“There is no more room in the Samajwadi Party for any BJP MLA, minister anymore,” the SP president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said on Saturday, a day after he welcomed seven ex-BJP MLAs, including two ministers, who quit the Yogi Adityanath government this week. “Let me say this… I will not take any BJP MLA (or) minister anymore. They (the BJP) can deny tickets (to their leaders) if they wish to…” Yadav told reporters in Lucknow.
Quitting from the BJP of the seven OBC leaders, including two from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, who were inducted in the SP with a lot of pomp and show, was earlier touted by the party as the “game changer” in the UP elections. But their induction also added headache for Yadav as in several constituencies his own party leaders were threatening to revolt against the party if they were denied ticket in preference to the turn-coats. Apparently, those who decided to quit the BJP just on the eve of the elections have come to the SP only after firm commitment that they would be given the SP ticket from the constituency they demand.
The flood of OBC leaders who walked out of the BJP and the Yogi Adityanath government over a 72-hour period this week has been widely seen as having blown a big hole in the party’s re-election bid. Apart from Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, five BJP MLAs – Roshan Lal Verma, Brijesh Prajapati, Mukesh Verma, Vinay Shakya and Bhagwati Sagar – also joined yesterday. Chaudhary Amar Singh of the Apna Dal, a BJP ally – did too, leaving Bala Avasthi the odd one out. The third minister to quit – Dara Singh Chauhan – will also join soon, media reports said.
Yadav’s declaration closing is doors came hours after Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad said seat-sharing talks between his Azad Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party had broken down. “… we are saying now we will not take any more leaders into the Samajwadi Party… We sacrificed a lot to bring people together (but) now there is no scope to take anyone else,” Akhilesh Yadav said.
Ahead of the election Yadav has stitched together an alliance of regional parties, including those with sway in the non-Yadav OBC communities – like those signed on yesterday – to defeat the BJP. In 2017 the BJP’s strategy to beat the Samajwadi Party was to win over the non-Yadav OBC castes given Yadav’s most loyal voters are seen to be Yadavs and Muslims. Akhilesh Yadav last year also joined hands with Omprakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, and with Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal in December.
The BJP, meanwhile, released its first list of 107 candidates from UP setting chief minister Yogi Adityanath to contest next month’s Assembly election from the Gorakhpur (Urban) seat. Yogi’s deputy, Keshav Prasad Maurya, will contest from Sirathu in Prayagraj.
Polling for the Gorakhpur (Urban) seat, which is the Chief Minister’s stronghold and voted him to the Lok Sabha for five straight terms till 2017, will be on March 3 – the sixth and penultimate phase. It will be Yogi’s first Assembly elections, he had been getting elected to the Lok Sabha from Gorakhpur in the last five Parliamentary elections.
“The decision has been made after much deliberation… the final decision (was taken) by the top leadership of the party,” Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters. “Yogiji said ‘I will contest from any seat party asks me to’… This was the party’s decision,” Pradhan said, dismissing speculation Yogi had been adamant about contesting from Gorakhpur. Sources had claimed he was more inclined to fight from Gorakhpur instead of starting over in a new constituency.
“I am thankful to PM Modi, BJP chief JP Nadda, (and the) Central Parliamentary Committee for fielding me from Gorakhpur. BJP works on the model of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas‘… BJP will form the government with full majority,” Adityanath later said.
In today’s list the BJP also named candidates for 105 other seats, of which it won 83 in 2017. The winning MLAs from 63 of these seats have been retained, with the remaining 20 new faces. Significantly, 44 of the 107 candidates named today are from OBC communities (votes from them are widely seen as critical to winning the UP election), with 19 others from Scheduled Castes. Only 10 women candidates have been named by the BJP.
As far as the caste break-up of the candidate list goes, 68% of the seats have gone to OBC candidates (44 candidates) and 19 SC candidates, including Jagpal Singh being fielded from the general category seat of Saharanpur. While 10 women have been included in the list, no Muslim has been given ticket.
The BJP was at pains to emphasise that the large number of seats given to non-upper-caste candidates put it ahead of other parties in terms of representation accorded to marginalised communities.
Former Uttarakhand Governor Baby Rani Maurya has been fielded from Agra (Rural) constituency. Among other prominent names in the list are Shrikant Sharma, who has been retained from Mathura, Mriganka Singh from Kairana, Pankaj Singh (son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh) from Noida, Suresh Rana from Thana Bhawan and Dhirendra Singh from Jewar.