In a major setback to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, Minister for Labour, Employment, and Coordination, Swami Prasad Maurya, a prominent OBC leader, resigned from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet on Tuesday, throwing a hint that he might join the Samajwadi Party.
A tall OBC leader representing the numerically dominant Kushwaha, Maurya communities, Swami Prasad Maurya had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2017 after quitting Bahujan Samaj Party in which he was second to Mayawati.
“I am now resigning from the UP cabinet in the wake of severe discrimination and neglect of the poor, farmers, marginalised, unemployed in the state. I tried my best to work for the welfare of the people in UP despite ideological differences with the BJP,” Maurya said in his resignation letter forwarded to Governor Anandiben Patel, which was released to the press on Tuesday afternoon.
Maurya’s exit, days ahead of the seven-phase UP elections starting February 10, spells trouble for the BJP which seeks to appeal to all Other Backward Classes and therefore a concerted exercise has begun to control the damage. Sources claimed that senior BJP leaders were in touch with Maurya and were trying to woo him back to the party fold.
Maurya has so far denied joining Samajwadi Party. “I will let you know about my future plans within a day or two,” he said.
But by Tuesday evening, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav tweeted a picture of him with Maurya, which read, “Saamajik nyay kaa inqalab hoga, baaes me badlav hoga (There will be a revolution in the field of social justice and there will be change in UP).”
Maurya’s leaving the BJP is an indicator of the crumbling of the rainbow coalition of backwards, upper caste and Dalits, which the BJP had built assiduously in the last many year. But the message emanating from this sudden development is that Backwards were being neglected in the saffron party. Rumours had been doing the rounds that several non-Yadav OBC BJP legislators might join the Samajwadi Party and the list included Maurya’s name among others, but the party brass preferred to ignore it and brushed it under the carpet.
Incidentally, Maurya’s daughter, Sanghamitra Maurya, is a BJP Lok Sabha member from Budaun and his son, Utkrust Maurya, too contested the polls on a BJP ticket from Dalmau in Rae Bareli in 2017, but lost to SP candidate Manoj Kumar Pandey.
Meanwhile, reacting to the resignation of Swami Prasad Maurya, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya appealed to him to reconsider his decision.
In a tweet, the deputy chief minister, who is in Delhi to attend the BJP Parliamentary Board meeting on Tuesday, posted, "Respected Swami Prasad Maurya ji, I do not know the reasons why you have resigned. But I appeal to you to sit and talk as such hasty decisions often prove to be wrong."