Most of the leaders who joined the BJP are from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community. (Twitter/@BJP4UP)
The BJP on Monday welcomed around 20 prominent leaders of the opposition parties. The list highlights Shalini Yadav, who contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the Samajwadi Party against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP in Uttar Pradesh has termed it as ‘Operation Demolition’, welcoming around 20 prominent leaders of opposition parties ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. It plans to induct more leaders, including the Samajwadi Party, in the coming days to further strengthen the opposition camp.
The most prominent name in the list of new defectors is Shalini Yadav, who contested against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi From SP in 2019 General Elections. She joined BJP on Monday. Yadav is the daughter-in-law of late Shyamlal Yadav, former Congress MP from Varanasi and deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha. She had joined Samajwadi Party in 2019.
Shalini Yadav had also failed in the mayoral election of Varanasi Municipal Corporation in 2017 when she was with the Congress. She is an alumnus of Banaras Hindu University.
In her first parliamentary election, Yadav contested against PM Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the Varanasi seat and lost by a margin of over 4.75 lakh votes.
“The hardworking workers (in the Samajwadi Party) were not being listened to. This was one of the reasons behind his defeat in the (Uttar Pradesh Assembly) elections,” he said after joining the BJP.
According to BJP’s state media in-charge Manish Dixit, recently the following leaders joined BJP besides Shalini Yadav:
- Former RLD MP Rajpal Saini (Muzaffarnagar)
- Former Minister Sahab Singh Saini (Saharanpur)
- Former MP Anshul Verma (Hardoi)
- Former SP MLA Sushma Patel (Jaunpur)
- Former minister Jagdish Sonkar (Jaunpur)
- Former MLA Gulab Saroj (Jaunpur)
- Former Congress media chairman Rajeev Bakshi (Lucknow)
- Former BSP chairman Gangadhar Kushwaha (Agra)
- Former SP district panchayat president Jitendra Mishra (Hamirpur)
- Former SP district panchayat president Satyapal Yadav (Hapur)
- Former SP district panchayat president Sunita Yadav (Hapur)
Most of the leaders who joined the BJP are from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community.
This is the second time in 10 days that prominent leaders of the opposition have joined the saffron party. Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief and former minister on 16 July Om Prakash Rajbhar joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), while former minister and Samajwadi Party MLA Dara Singh Chauhan (Ghosi-Mau) joined the BJP.
Chouhan has returned to the BJP after quitting the Samajwadi Party ahead of the UP elections in 2022.
Taking a dig at leaders joining the BJP, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav tweeted: “Some people change like a Rs 2,000 note.”