Within 24 hours of the announcement of the Lok Sabha election schedule, Bahujan Samaj Party faced a setback when its senior leader in Shamli resigned from the party on Sunday.

Reports confirmed that Shamli nagar panchayat chairman Zaheer Malik resigned from the BSP. He alleged that the party was not fighting the elections strongly and the workers were also being neglected.

Zaheer Malik has contested elections from Thana Bhawan assembly constituency on the BSP ticket. He won the nagar panchayat chairman’s post on BSP symbol.

He is likely to join the Samajwadi Party in Lucknow.

In 2005, the then cabinet minister Anuradha Chaudhary had made Zaheer Malik join the Rashtriya Lok Dal and in 2006 he contested the election for the chairman’s post on the symbol of RLD. He defeated the current RLD MLA from Thana Bhawan assembly constituency, Ashraf Ali Khan, and registered victory.

After resigning from RLD in 2008, Zaheer Malik joined the BSP. In 2011-12 he contested the elections as a BSP-supported candidate but lost. In 2012-13, he joined SP under the leadership of SP district president Kiran Pal Kashyap. After this, he left the SP and took membership of BSP in Lucknow in front of party supremo Mayawati and contested Thana Bhawan assembly elections, in which he came in third place.

Zaheer Malik said that he had become disillusioned with BSP and due to this, he had resigned from the party and had decided to join SP.

He said that in two-four days, SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav would induct him into the party in Lucknow.

Meanwhile, BSP has so far announced 11 candidates, including five belonging to the Muslim community. They include Aqeel Ahmed Patta from Kannauj, Dr Mujahid Hussain alias Babu Bhai from Amroha, Majid Ali from Saharanpur, former minister Anees Ahmed Khan alias Phool Babu from Pilibhit and Irfan Saifi from Moradabad.

The party has decided to field Ashok Pandey from Unnao, Sachchidanand Pandey alias Sachin from Ayodhya, Chaudhary Vijendra Singh from Bijnor, Dara Singh Prajapati from Muzaffarnagar, Praveen Bansal from Baghpat and Rajesh Dwivedi from Akbarpur.

The BSP has decided to contest the Lok Sabha elections alone this time.