Lucknow: The BJP is facing fresh trouble from one of its allies after the party’s poor performance in the Assembly elections. Om Prakash Rajbhar, a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government in UP, has said that his party may go solo on all the 80 seats in the state in 2019.
Rajbhar, who heads the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, has often been critical of the BJP and its policies. “If BJP decides to keep us out of a coalition in 2019, then we will be prepared to go solo on all the 80 Lok Sabha seats,” Rajbhar was quoted as saying by an English daily on Thursday.
Rajbhar’s party has four MLAs in the UP Assembly. He has often been critical of Adityanath and has claimed that his party was not getting the due ‘respect’.
Last month, Rajbhar attacked the UP government for renaming the cities of Mughalsarai and Faizabad. “They say they (the cities) were named after the Mughals. They have national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, UP minister Mohsin Raza, three Muslim faces of the BJP, change their names first,” he had said.
BJP state president Mahendra Nath Pandey had responded by saying that Rajbhar should not be taken seriously. “We are running a government in the state with overwhelming majority. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath are doing exemplary work. On such a large ‘Rajpath’, in the political arena, there are some necessary evils (anivaarya buraai) who accompany you. As of now, it is Om Prakash (Rajbhar) who is a necessary evil and accompanying (us).”