UP elections 2022: Expelled Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs meet Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav

Shubham Ghosh

NINE Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) members of the Uttar Pradesh state legislative Assembly reportedly met Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday (15) and expected to join it ahead of the crucial state elections in the state next year. These MLAs (member of legislative Assembly) has been expelled by their party supremo Mayawati over the last four years.

These MLAs are Aslam Raini, Aslam Ali Chowdhari, Muztaba Siddiqui, Hargobind Bhargav, Vandana Singh, Hakim Lal Bind, Sushma Patel, Ramvir Upadhyay and Anil Singh.

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Yadav, who lost the chief ministership in 2017 after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the polls in UP, is keen to project his party as the main rival to the saffron party. Irfan Solanki, an SP MLA, said people are meeting Yadav ahead of the Assembly elections since the party is a welcoming space unlike that of Mayawati who he called “oppressive” by nature or the BJP. He said MLAs of BSP and BJP are scared of express themselves and hence are coming to the SP.

Bahujan Samaj Party chief and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati (Photo: PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images).

Solanki also said that “every leader, irrespective of party, has a ground base” and hoped the SP would make use of the BSP’s MLAs.

Yadav, 47, also told an Indian media outlet recently that his party will not make any alliance with parties like BSP or the Congress for the upcoming polls but will bank more on smaller parties. The SP had an alliance with the Congress in the 2017 UP polls and with the BSP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. On both occasions, the party did poorly.

On the other hand, the BSP MLAs’ meeting with Yadav shows that not all is okay with the party ahead of next year’s key elections. The BSP had won only 19 seats in the 2017 UP polls. It later lost one of them in a by-poll and of the remaining MLAs, Mayawati has expelled many. Earlier in June, the party expelled Lalji Verma, who was also the BSP’s legislative party leader, and Ram Achal Rajbhar, for anti-party activities. With their expulsion, the total number of legislators the BSP has expelled now is 11 which leaves only seven MLAs left in the 403-member Assembly. The expelled members though have not been disqualified yet.