Four more BSP MLAs join BJP

LUCKNOW: Four BSP lawmakers joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh on Monday.

They are Romi Sahni, a Khatri from Pallia in Lakhimpur, Mahavir Rana, a Thakur from Behat in Saharanpur, Roshanlal Verma, a Lodh from Tilhar in Shahjahanpur and Om Kumar, a Dalit from Nehtaur in Bijnor.

With their joining, close to 100 BSP leaders, including serving and former lawmakers and influential leaders have joined the BJP.

The buzz is that all serving BSP MLAs who have joined the BJP will contest elections. However, officially the BJP has maintained that the joining have been unconditional.

Some of the BSP lawmakers like Sahni - suspended in July by the BSP leadership after he held a press conference accusing party chief Mayawati of demanding “money for tickets” - are considered close to former BSP coordinator Jugal Kishore.

Kishore, who was a close confidant of BSP chief had joined the BJP last year on March 15 – Mayawati’s birthday. Rana, a first-term MLA from Behat, had embraced the BSP along with his elder brother Jagdish Rana, a former MP from Saharanpur, in 2008, a year before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. In January, while Jagdish was expelled by the BSP leadership, Mahavir was suspended for anti-party activities.

Ironically, the then BSP general secretary Swami Prasad Maurya, who had announced the party decision on Rana brothers too has quit the BSP and joined the BJP. “We now have a problem of plenty,” says a BJP insider.

UP BJP spokesman Harish Chandra Srivastava said along with the four BSP MLAs several other party leaders including block pramukhs too joined the BJP. “Besides them, former president of the Lucknow Bar Association Chandralal Dixit too joined the party,” Srivastava said.