SP and RLD Leaders in UP Switch Over to BJP

HYDERABAD: As BJP continues to bring more and more senior leaders from electorally significant communities in UP to its fold and give successive jolts to the opposition parties, another batch of senior leaders belonging to SP & RLD have switched sides on Monday along with their supporters.

The SP members who crossed over to the lotus camp include Shalini Yadav who had contested from Varanasi in 2019 elections against PM Modi As a SP-BSP alliance candidate and had come at number two, polling 1.95 Lakhs vote, ex MLA from Jaunpur Sushma Patel, ex minister Sahab Singh Saini from Saharanpur, and ex MP from Hardoi Anshul Verma.   

Rashtriya Lok Dal leader and ex Rajya Sabha MP Rajpal Singh Saini from Muzaffarnagr also joined BJP on Monday. All these leaders joined BJP at the state party headquarters in Lucknow in the presence of BJP State unit president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, and both deputy CMs – Brajesh Pathak & Keshav Prasad Maurya.

While Sushma and Shalini belong to OBC community and hail from eastern UP, Sahab Singh Saini and Rajpal Singh Saini are from western UP where Saini community has good presence especially Saharanpur & Moradabad districts. Shalini praised PM Modi stating that her vision for development of Varanasi is being fulfilled by the present government.

Speaking further she pointed out zero discipline and zero respect for women as two major issues with SP and also the reasons why it is losing one election after another. Other leaders especially Sushma Patel also had a similar point of view regarding their disenchantment with SP. Sushma further added that Samajwadi Party is the party of only one specific caste. It is riddled with factionalism and its local leaders at times work to ensure the defeat of the party candidates in the election.

In response to this development, SP President Akhilesh Yadav tweeted, “Kuch log chale gaye 2000 ke note ki tarah...” (Some people have gone away like 2000 Rs note) in an obvious reference to the short lived existence and subsequent discontinuation of Rs 2000 note.