Key ally placated, BJP to finetune poll strategy in UP
After Shah’s meeting with SBSP leader Om Prakash Rajbhar in Delhi, BJP says he ‘remains with us’
LUCKNOW: The suspense over BJP ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party’s likely move in the March 23 Rajya Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh ended with SBSP chief and UP cabinet minister Om Prakash Rajbhar emerging satisfied from his meeting with BJP chief Amit Shah in New Delhi on Tuesday evening, political leaders familiar with the development said.
The BJP’s media cell chief Anil Baluni said the meeting happened between Shah and Rajbhar, and the ‘he remains with us’.
Until his meeting with Shah, Rajbhar had been spitting fire at the BJP, which he had accused of not following the coalition dharma.
Rajbhar had skipped the celebration to mark the first anniversary of the Yogi government on Monday. He had also threatened that his party’s four MLAs would not vote in the Rajya Sabha election in case BJP did not redress its grievances.
After the meeting, Rajbhar said on the phone from Delhi: “Shah will come to Lucknow on April 10 when the issues I have flagged will be discussed during a meeting featuring chief minister Yogi Adityanath and state BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.”
The news agency PTI quoted Rajbhar as saying, “We have decided to vote for the BJP in Rajya Sabha polls.”
The Tuesday’s meeting was originally scheduled at 2pm but was delayed till about 5 pm. At a rally in Basti on Sunday, the SBSP leader had urged his supporters to boycott all political rallies including those by the BJP.
“I was feeling left out and ignored by the state BJP leadership. That’s why I had sought an audience with Shah. I am hoping for a result,” Rajbhar had said ahead of his meeting with Shah.
It was Shah who was instrumental in SBSP, a party supported by Rajbhars, an OBC subcaste influential in over 100 east UP assembly constituencies, inking a pact with the BJP ahead of the 2017 UP polls that the BJP won.
The SBSP also won four seats and Rajbhar became a cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath government.
Ally placated, the BJP will now set about putting its Rajya Sabha election strategy in place.
The strategy largely involves formulating a plan to ensure the win of party’s ninth candidate Anil Agarwal, who will require nine additional votes, party leaders said.
Agarwal’s win will mean the defeat of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar who is likely to be supported jointly by the opposition.
Chief minister Yogi Aditya- nath will also hold a dinner meeting with all party lawmakers as well as all the nine Rajya Sabha candidates of the BJP at his official residence on Wednesday.
At the dinner meeting, Adityanath is expected to fine tune the party’s strategy for the Friday vote, party insiders said.
The opposition parties have stepped up efforts to unite and vote for the BSP nominee. This was a prospect that the BJP was desperate to avoid after losing the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats last week, party leaders said.
The BJP with 311 MLAs will easily get eight of its candidates elected. The party’s ninth candidate Anil Agarwal will fall short by nine votes even after SBSP (4 MLAs) and Apna Dal (9 MLAs) vote for him along with the BJP’s 15 spare votes, making it 28 votes.
Each candidate requires 37 votes for an outright win. That means Agarwal will have to look for nine additional votes. The party claims it has been assured two of these by SP MLA Nitin Agarwal, whose father Naresh Agrawal joined the BJP last week, and the NISHAD Party’s Vijay Mishra.
The BJP was looking to win over independents, said party leaders who did not wish to be named. They suggested that some MLAs in the Congress and the BSP too were in touch, indicating the possibility of cross-voting.