Prominent OBC face of the Yogi Adityanath government, Swami Prasad Maurya, resigned from the Uttar Pradesh cabinet on Tuesday, less than 30 days before the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections are held on 10 February. Maurya, who held the labour and employment ministry, in his resignation letter to Governor Anandi Ben, claimed that he was resigning due to neglect of Dalits, backwards, farmers, unemployed, youth as well as small traders by the UP government.
Following his resignation, four more MLAs close to him—Roshan Lal Verma, Brijesh Prajapati, Bhagwati Sagar and Vinay Shakya—too announced their resignations. All are likely to contest the elections on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket. Soon after tendering his resignation, Maurya went and met SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. Akhilesh Yadav shared a photo of him with Maurya on Twitter, and welcomed him into the Samajwadi Party fold. Soon after Maurya’s resignation, Yadav tweeted, “I welcome Swami Prasad Maurya, who struggled for social justice and equality in the state, to the Samajwadi Party. There will be a revolution for social justice, there will be a change in 2022.”
On Twitter, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya urged Swami Prasad Maurya to reconsider his move. “I don’t know for what reasons respected Swami Prasad Maurya has tendered his resignation. I appeal to him to sit down for a talk. Decisions taken in a hurry often prove wrong,” he said in a tweet in Hindi.
Maurya, a five-time MLA, had joined the BJP in 2016 after resigning from the BSP. He was considered crucial for the BJP’s OBC outreach effort in the state to garner the non Yadav OBC which account for close to 40% of the total population.
Maurya, who is a MLA from Padrauna in eastern Uttar Pradesh, BJP party source, said, was unhappy with two things— “not being given importance by the state leadership (referring to the CM) and the party’s reluctance to confirm an assembly ticket for his son”, a redux of what happened in the 2012 Assembly elections when he was able to secure three tickets from the BSP for himself, his daughter and his son.
The BSP chief, Mayawati, had then given tickets to Maurya’s son Utkarsh Maurya from Dalmau in Rae Bareli, to his daughter Sanghamitra from Aliganj in Etah while Maurya senior himself contested from Padrauna in Kushinagar. Both the son and daughter had lost the elections then. Sanghamitra is now a BJP MP from Badaun.
While resigning from the BSP in June 2016, Maurya had claimed the same things that he claimed on Wednesday, that he was resigning due to neglect of party workers and the public. While the electoral impact of the 68-year-old Maurya’s movement will come to the fore on 10 March, when the elections are declared, the SP is likely to market Maurya as an example of BJP’s “anti-OBC stance” to attract voters who belongs to the biggest caste group among OBCs in the state after the Yadavs and Kurmis. Known by surnames like Kachhi, Maurya, Kushwaha, Saini and Shakya, this OBC group is present in almost all Assembly seats from East to West UP.
BJP party sources told The Daily Guardian that the departure of Maurya was not unexpected as had been discussing this with his close associates. “The fact that he had problems with the party was no secret. He was not getting ‘enough space’ and value in the BJP that he used to get in the BSP because of the presence of Keshav Prasad Maurya and the different style of functioning in BJP. We are not worried. Due to this development, the voters in his constituency will see through his lies that he left BJP not because of a ‘bigger reason’ but for his personal benefits not being fulfilled,” a party spokesperson said.
In June last year, in what was perceived as a direct challenge to CM Adityanath, Maurya had declared that who will be the next CM of Uttar Pradesh will be decided post the results. Sources close to him said that after this, he was getting indications that even if the party wins the elections, he was unlikely to be made a minister.
Meanwhile, with the Election Commission putting a moratorium on holding rallies and public gatherings due to a spurt in coronavirus cases, the BJP on Tuesday launched a “door-to-door campaign” to reach out to voters across Uttar Pradesh. Starting the campaign in the state capital Lucknow, UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh knocked on doors of houses in Ballu Adda area and pasted stickers outside the homes and also applied “tilak” on the forehead of some house owners. “As per the guidelines of the Election Commission, the BJP is reaching to the beneficiaries of various schemes of the Centre and state governments. We are giving our report card to the public, and taking suggestions from them as well. This is the first government, which is going door-to-door,” Singh told reporters.
A report from Lucknow said that former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati will not contest the upcoming Assembly polls in the state. “Former Chief Minister Mayawati and I will not contest the Assembly elections,” BSP MP Satish Chandra Misra said. Mayawati has never contested an Assembly election in the state in the past. Taking a jibe on the Samajwadi Party, Misra said, “If Samajwadi Party does not have 400 candidates, how will they win 400 seats?” The BSP MP said that neither SP nor BJP will come to power and stated that BSP is going to form the government in Uttar Pradesh. (WITH AGENCY INPUTS)