Allies indulge in blamegame amidst reports of cabinet reshuffle in UP

Lucknow, July 16 (IANS) With reports of a cabinet reshuffle next month gaining ground, the allies of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh are getting increasingly restive.

The allies have started blaming factors -- other than their own -- for the NDA’s poor performance in Uttar Pradesh in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.

Sanjay Nishad of the Nishad Party, O P Rajbhar of SBSP and Ashish Patel (husband of Anupriya Patel) of Apna Dal (S) are ministers in the Yogi government.

Apna Dal (S) chief and Union minister Anupriya Patel was one of the first allies to take a thinly veiled jibe at the Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly denying reserved seats to candidates of the Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes and Tribes in competitive exams.

Anupriya Patel’s letter to the chief minister, sent earlier this week, is seen to have a two-pronged objective -- to try to woo communities that seemed to have moved away from her party and to score some brownie points among Yogi detractors in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

This is the first time that the normally reticent Apna Dal (S) has chosen to speak out against the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh. The Apna Dal (S) had contested two Lok Sabha seats and could win only one.

Nishad Party, another BJP ally, blamed the bureaucracy for the below-average performance in Lok Sabha polls.

Sanjay Nishad said that there are many administrative officers in UP who are 'elephant (BSP) and cycle' (SP) from inside. There are many officers who did not respect our workers and leaders. “The result of this was seen in the Lok Sabha elections in Ayodhya and some other places,” he said.

The Nishad Party also questioned the bulldozer policy of the Yogi Adityanath government and said, “It is justified to run bulldozers on mafias and criminals in the state, but the poor and other people have also suffered because their houses were bulldozed without investigation.”

The Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) has already blamed the BJP for its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls saying that while the BJP benefitted from Rajbhar votes, the SBSP did not get any support from the BJP.

BJP insiders claim that the party could not perform well in the Lok Sabha elections because the allies failed to ensure the support of OBC caste groups.

BJP minister Anil Rajbhar said, “It is a fact that SBSP could not get Rajbhar votes for the BJP. It is because of the BJP that SBSP is enjoying the perks of power. Had it not been for the BJP, Om Prakash Rajbhar would have remained a nonentity in politics.”

Om Prakash Rajbhar retaliated by saying that he moved around with his resignation in his pocket. “Those who are levelling allegations against me, they should be ashamed of themselves. I will not bow before such threats and neither will I ever compromise with the interests of the poor and downtrodden,” he said.

He also referred to his counterpart as “monkeys who have danced for Samajwadi leaders”-- a reference to the fact that Anil Rajbhar was earlier in the Samajwadi Party.

This is the first time in the Yogi Adityanath government that the ministers are openly attacking each other.