Taking a swipe at the opposition parties, Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) president Om Prakash Rajbhhar, a former ally of the Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, said the efforts of unity for taking on the BJP are meaningless without having Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on board.
Rajbhar, a former UP minister, claimed that the BSP supremo would emerge as the key factor in the state in the next Lok Sabha elections and that he was ready to join hands with her to counter the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.
“Mayawati, who has been the UP CM four times, is an able administrator and her party has a wide support base across many states. She is a big face of the country’s opposition politics, and a united opposition should project her as its prime ministerial candidate. Unless Mayawati is made the prominent face of the united opposition, it will be a meaningless exercise in UP, as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav have no following in the state,” Rajbhar said here on Tuesday.
He said that the BSP has a strong support base in 13 states. He added that besides BSP, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, headed by Jayant Chaudhary, has a base in western Uttar Pradesh while SBSP has a strong following in eastern UP.
Rajbhar also claimed that a Maharashtra-like shake-up was on the cards in Uttar Pradesh. He said that several Samajwadi Party leaders were likely to join the Yogi Adityanath cabinet in its next expansion.
“Several senior SP leaders, who are upset with Akhilesh Yadav, are likely to join the BJP government...we may see them take oath as ministers,” said the SBSP chief, whose party had contested the 2017 UP assembly elections in alliance with the BJP and wielded influence over the ‘Rajbhar’ community (OBC) which are in sizable numbers in around half-a-dozen districts in the eastern UP region.
The SBSP chief, however, did not reveal the names of the SP leaders and MLAs, who, according to him, could join the UP government.