LUCKNOW: In an apparent reference to several of her party members, including MLAs, joining Samajwadi Party recently, BSP chief Mayawati said that this kind of politics was not going to benefit any party.
She also hit out at the BJP governments at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh for making hurried announcements and inaugurating incomplete projects ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls, warning them that people could see through these desperate attempts.
“By inducting expelled, selfish and inactive members from other parties into their own ahead of elections, political parties must remember that they will not be able to increase their presence like this. In fact, people don’t look favourably upon such political parties. Everyday, there is news of some or the other person joining like this, as if it is a great thing. BSP likes to keep away from such things,” she said.
Currently, there are only three active MLAs left in BSP out of the 19 originally elected in 2017.
One other, Sukhdev Rajbhar, passed away recently while Ramvir Upadhyay, MLA from Sadabad, is under suspension though he has not joined any other party. Another, Shah Alam from Mubarakpur, resigned recently though his resignation is yet to be formally accepted.
The rest have all been expelled over the past two years and at least eight of them have joined SP.
This includes Aslam Raini, Hakim Lal Bind, Sushma Patel, Aslam Ali, Hargovind Bhargava, Mohammad Mujtaba Siddqui, and most recently, Lalji Verma, Ram Achal Rajbhar and Vinay Shankar Tiwari. Among these, said party sources, Verma and Rajbhar were “forced out” of the party due to internal politics.
On December 6, Mayawati expelled Vinay, his elder brother Bhishma Shankar Tiwari, who was MP from Sant Kabir Nagar in 2009, and another relative Ganesh Shankar Pandey, who was chairperson of Vidhan Parishad when BSP was last in power.
Vinay and Bhishma are sons of Hari Shankar Tiwari, a six-time MLA.
Two others have either joined BJP or are likely to in the near future, including Sagri MLA Bandana Singh and Purwa MLA Anil Singh.
Don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari has also been denied a ticket by Mayawati, who said this was a calculated step to weed out rouge elements from her party.
Despite this exodus, party members still claim that this will not have any impact on BSP’s prospects in the upcoming elections.
“Our vote base is intact and the votes are in Behenji’s name. People know that these MLAs have political aspirations beyond what BSP stands for. Nobody is going to engage with them,” said a senior party member.
