Swami Prasad Maurya, who recently resigned from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and joined the Samajwadi Party on Friday, predicted doom for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the UP assembly elections.
Maurya, responding to Yogi Adityanath’s 80 per cent Vs 20 per cent poll pitch, said, “Now the fight has turned 85 per cent Vs 15 per cent and the BJP will be left with less than 8-10 per cent votes as there are many claimants to the 15 per cent vote share representing the upper castes.
Days after resigning from the BJP, Swami Prasad Maurya along with Dharm Singh Saini and other rebel BJP MLAs officially joined the Samajwadi Party on Friday on the occasion of Makar Sankranti.
The resignations by Maurya and other rebel MLAs is seen as a setback for the ruling BJP, which enjoyed the support of Other Backward Classes in the 2017 UP assembly elections and 2019 general elections. The SP chief welcomed Maurya and others.
Addressing a meeting at the state office of the SP, Maurya said, “Makar Sankranti is the day when there will be a historic end to the BJP. The big leaders of the BJP who never paid any heed to our demands are having sleepless nights now. The BJP leaders are asking why we didn’t resign in the past five years; some are saying that I left the BJP because of my son. I want to tell them that the BJP has duped backwards, Dalits, minorities and youth of the country.”
“The BJP formed the government by encashing the names of Keshav Prasad Maurya and Swami Prasad Maurya. There were talks about making any of us the chief minister, but they brought someone from Gorakhpur and duped Dalits and Backwards,” Maurya charged.
“Today the upper caste people are enjoying while the backward classes and Dalits are struggling. They say the elections are 80 per cent Vs 20 per cent but I say now it is 85 per cent Vs 15 per cent; 85 per cent hamara hai aur 15 per cent mein bhi bantwara hai (85% is ours and there is division in 15 per cent too). BJP leaders say they will win on the Hindu card, then why did they try to play with the reservation given to Dalits and backwards. Appointment letters were given to 19,000 general category people, when 69,000 appointments were okayed. I want to know if backwards and Dalits are not Hindu? If yes, then why did you give their reservation to others,” Maurya asked.
Further attacking the BJP, Swami Prasad Maurya said, “When I was in the cabinet, there was a proposal that the posts should be filled with general category applicants without advertisement as there were no applicants from Dalit and backward communities. I strongly objected and the chief minister noted down my objection, but still he did not stop the proposal.”
“Now they are disinvesting and privatising the central public sector undertakings (PSUs) only to scrap reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes. When PSUs go to private hands there will be no reservation. Yogi ji, I want to say that you are committing a sin while sitting on the chief minister’s chair. Are only upper caste people Hindus in your eyes? If only those 10 per cent are Hindus in your view then your pack up is definite. Now, all the Backwards, Dalits and everyone is against you. There will be further division in 8-10 per cent as there are many samajwadis and Ambedkarwadis in that percentage.”
“I thought after spending 14 years in exile, the BJP would have learnt its lessons, but it seems that once again they will return to what they were before 2017. I want to tell the BJP leaders that after today, there will be a tsunami in the state which will devastate the BJP. I joined hands with Akhilesh Yadav as he is young, educated and able, I will make crores of people stand behind him and will destroy the BJP. I also challenge that whomever I leave, they stand nowhere. Behen ji (Mayawati) is a living example. Till the time I was with her, she was the chief minister. I left her, and today she can be seen nowhere,” Maurya said.
He also claimed that had there been no model code of conduct in place and there was no Covid protocol, lakhs of people would have come to attend today’s historic event.
Another former BJP minister who joined Samajwadi Party, Dharm Singh Saini, said, “Today’s programme is being held in the party office because of the model code of conduct, otherwise if there was no ban, there would have been more than 10 lakh people. We take oath on Makar Sankranti to save the Constitution and to save the oppressed Dalits from atrocities. We take a pledge that we will form a samajwadi government on March 10. The humanity and respect that I got from Akhilesh ji was not found anywhere else because I have been both in the BSP and BJP. Will get you (Akhilesh Yadav) sworn in as chief minister in March and will get you sworn in as prime minister in 2024.”
