Sidharth Nath Singh  |  Photo Credit: ANI
New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh minister Sidharth Nath Singh gave reasons for the departure of MLAs from the BJP saying some are going for their personal benefit while others fear they won’t get the ticket from the constituency of their choice.
Amid the exodus of OBC leaders in Uttar Pradesh, he said that OBCs and Dalits are being misguided in the state.
He also challenged the leaders who jumped ship to list 10 welfare schemes by the Samajwadi Party for OBCs and Dalits.
“SP only works for Muslims and Yadavs. I want to tell them that other OBC communities will never join the Muslims and Yadavs,” he added.
The recent developments less than a month before the crucial elections that will also have an impact on the 2024 parliamentary polls are set to give a big boost to SP’s influence among the non-Yadav OBCs in the state.
As of now, 6 BJP leaders including 2 top ministers and 4 MLAs have quit the party to join SP.
The exodus started after Swami Prasad Maurya quit the BJP and announced he would join Akhilesh Yadav’s party.
Hours after Maurya’s resignation, Brijesh Kumar Prajapati, and Bhagwati Sagar, Vinay Shakya also resigned from the party. Later, Roshan Lal Verma, Dara Singh Chauhan and Dharam Singh Saini announced their decision to leave the saffron party.
Meanwhile, Maurya has said that he will make sure that the saffron party shrinks back to the 45-seats like it was before 2017 in the upcoming polls.
To counter the departure of prominent OBC faces from the party, BJP has launched ‘Samajik Samark Abhiyan’ to reach out to the community to lessen the impact of the leaders leaving the party.
Starting January 14 party leaders will reach out to the backward communities in all the 403 Assembly constituencies of the state telling people about the welfare measures taken by the BJP government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the last seven years.