The BJP in Uttar Pradesh has embarked on an inducting spree in the run-up to Lok Sabha elections 2024, welcoming around 20 key leaders from opposition parties as per what is being dubbed as ‘operation demolition’. It plans to induct more leaders, including from the Samajwadi Party, in the coming days to further dent the opposition ranks.
The most significant on the list of new turncoats is Shalini Yadav, who had contested against Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the SP in the 2019 General Elections. She joined the BJP on Monday. Yadav is the daughter-in-law of the late Shyamlal Yadav, former Congress MP from Varanasi and deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha. She had joined the Samajwadi Party in 2019.
Shalini Yadav had also unsuccessfully run for the mayoral elections of Varanasi Municipal Corporation in 2017 when she was with the Congress. She is an alumnus of the Banaras Hindu University.
In her first parliamentary election, Yadav had contested for the Varanasi seat against PM Modi in 2019 Lok Sabha polls and was defeated by a margin of over 4.75 lakh votes.
“Diligent workers were not being heard (in the Samajwadi Party). This was one of the reasons behind their defeat in the (Uttar Pradesh Assembly) elections,” she said after joining the BJP.
According to BJP state media in-charge Manish Dikshit, the following leaders recently joined the BJP apart from 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 Rajiv Bakshi (Lucknow)
- Former BSP chairman Gangadhar Kushwaha (Agra)
- Former SP zila panchayat president Jitendra Mishra (Hamirpur)
- Former SP zila panchayat president Satyapal Yadav (Hapur)
- Former SP zila panchayat president Sunita Yadav (Hapur)
Majority of the leaders who joined the BJP belong to Other Backward Class (OBC) communities.
This is the second time in 10 days that prominent leaders from the opposition have joined the saffron bandwagon. On July 16, Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief and former minister Om Prakash Rajbhar joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), while former minister and Samajwadi Party MLA Dara Singh Chauhan (Ghosi-Mau) joined the BJP.
Chauhan has returned to the BJP after quitting it for the Samajwadi Party ahead of UP elections in 2022.
Taking a dig at the leaders who jumped ship to the BJP, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav tweeted: “Some people change like a Rs 2,000 note.”
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