Bahujan Samaj Party Member of Parliament from Amroha, Danish Ali, has been suspended from the party for anti-party activities.
The BSP, in a statement issued on Saturday, said that it had suspended Ali for indulging in anti-party activities.
A Jamia Millia Islamia alumnus active in politics since student days and a vocal advocate of the causes he believes in, Danish Ali first made his name far from the national stage and even native Uttar Pradesh.
During the 2017 assembly elections in Karnataka, Ali’s name had surfaced as the main force and face behind a Janata Dal (Secular) and Congress post-poll alliance. Trusted by JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda and general secretary of the party, Ali, just 42 at the time, was named the convener of the five-member coalition coordination and monitoring committee the two parties set up, as they ran a short-lived JD(S)-Congress government.
Danish Ali contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election on BSP ticket from Amroha in UP, close to his native Hapur. Despite it being his first electoral contest, and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s massive win from the state, Ali had won from Amroha, a constituency dominated by Muslims and having a substantial number of Dalits. He secured about 51 per cent of the votes, defeating sitting BJP MP Kunwar Singh Tanwar by a margin of over 63,000 votes.
Since moving to the BSP, Ali had held his own. In a party where Mayawati has the first and the last word, he was known to speak his mind on issues, whether at his constituency or in Delhi, and quickly emerged as the minority face of the BSP in national politics. For a while, Ali also headed the 10-member BSP Legislature Party in the Lok Sabha.
As per PRS Legislative Research data, Ali is an active parliamentarian, recording 98 per cent attendance and participating in more debates than the national average. Recently he hit the headlines for one of the most unseemly exchanges in Parliament. He had approached Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla for action against BJP member Ramesh Bidhuri over unparliamentary remarks made by the latter regarding him, during the debate in the Lok Sabha on the Chandrayaan 3 Lunar Mission.
