At the same time, BJP MLA Avtar Singh Bhadana, a Gurjar, quit the party to join Jayant Chaudhary-led RLD, ally of Samajwadi Party. Bhadana has been a former Congress MP and represented Faridabad in Haryana three times (1991, 2004 and 2009) and Meerut in 1999. He turned to BJP just before 2017 assembly elections and won from Mirpur assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar for the first time. Bhadana is reported to be lying idle in the saffron camp for past couple of years.
@DaraSinghBJP ji was a part of the cabinet for the whole five years! Never heard a word spoken on the neglect of backwards and downtrodden… https://t.co/y4agQivu61
— Nand Gopal Gupta ‘Nandi’ (@NandiGuptaBJP) 1641987637000
The fast-paced developments came on a day UP minister Dara Singh Chauhan resigned from the state Cabinet and 24 hours after labour minister Swami Prasad Maurya too quit the Yogi Adityanath team. On the same day, three BJP MLAs – Roshan Lal Verma (thieves), Brijesh Prajapati (Tindwari) and Bhagwati Sagar (Bilhaur) – resigned from the party. This came on a day, BJP started the process of candidate selection for UP polls.
The induction of two Opposition MLAs into BJP marked the saffron outfit’s deft move to arrest the growing narrative against the party vis-a-vis backward castes. Saini contested from Behat in Saharanpur district on a Congress ticket in 2012, but lost to BSP’s Mahavir Singh Rana by a slender margin of 500 votes.
But in 2017, he defeated Rana, who contested as a BJP candidate, by a margin of over 25,000 votes. Saini happens to be a backward and considered popular in his constituency. BJP sources said, he is likely to be given a ticket from the saffron party from Behat, which goes to polls in the second phase of elections.
Likewise, Hari Om Yadav belongs to the old guard in the SP camp. He registered a win for the first time on SP ticket in 2002, when he contested from Shikohabad and defeated BSP’s Vimal Kumar.
He, however, lost in 2007 to Independent candidate Ashok Yadav. Since 2012, Hari Om has been winning from Sirsaganj in Firozabad.
The high-voltage drama surrounding crossing over of MLAs received a fresh twist later in the day when a ‘fake’ resignation letter of Bhadohi MLA Ravindra Nath Tripathi went viral. Even as the saffron brass scurried to enquire on the development, Tripathi released his video statement, claiming some “mischievous elements had used a fake letterhead and forged signatures” to produce a “fake resignation letter”. “I am a sepoy of BJP. This is a conspiracy to spread rumours in society…Jai Sri Ram…Jai Parshuram,” he stated.
Cabinet minister Nand Gopal Nandi, meanwhile, waded into the drama, questioning his colleague, Dara Singh Chauhan, over his decision to step down as minister. “While being in state cabinet for five years, he never spoke about state government’s apathy towards dalits and backwards. Everyone knows the script writer, who copy-pasted the resignation letter of Swami Prasad Maurya (he resigned as minister on Tuesday) to put out your resignation letter,” he said in a tweet.
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