Keeping an eye on upcoming elections, BJP Massive Rally with Nishad Party of Eastern ally UP in Lucknow to raise poll trick

The Nishad Party aligned with the BJP prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha poll.

Lucknow:

Home Secretary Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Minister Yogi Adityanath will lead the BJP’s first major joint rally with an ally in Uttar Pradesh, ahead of next year’s state elections.

The protest came a day after former Minister and Samajwadi Party head Akhilesh Yadav – which tracks UP polls – paired up with his estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav to forge another electoral coalition.

Today’s rally in Lucknow was organized by Dr Sanjay Nishad of the Nishad Party, which has been a BJP ally since the 2019 Lok Sabha poll.

The Nishad Party, founded in 2016, has a lot of influence in eastern UP, especially in riverside communities like the Nishads and Mallahs.

The party first came to prominence when during a walk at the Lok Sabha 2018 in Gorakhpur – home of Yogi Adityanath – Praveen Nishad, son of the founder of the Nishad Party, stunned the BJP by winning a seat on the agenda. of the Samajwadi Party and with unofficial support from the BSP of Mayawati.

The victory laid the foundation for the SP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh.

However, just a year later, the Nishad Party switched to the BJP side. Mr Nishad, the giant killer of Gorakhpur, was offered a ticket by neighboring BJP Sant Kabir Nagar and he won.

At the rally in Lucknow, Interior Minister Amit Shah is expected to commit to a long-standing request from the Nishad Party to include the Nishads – now part of the OBC community – on the list of Scheduled Actors to help them get higher quota benefits.

Previous such moves by various governments – from Yogi Adityanath to Akhilesh Yadav to even his father Mulayam Singh Yadav – to place 17 OBCs on the SC list have failed because of legal objections or bureaucratic barriers.

Together, these communities – from the Nishads to the Mallahs to mud artisans like the Kumhars – make up more than 10 percent of the state’s population.

Akhilesh Yadav, whose protests increasingly saw large crowds, was interested in getting as many small parties involved as possible.

Currently, he has influenced ties with six regional outfits, including Shivpal Yadav’s uncle Shivpal Yadav’s Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party. Other coalitions include the Janwadi (Socialist) Party, Om Prakash Rajbhar’s SBSP, Keshav Dev Maurya’s Mahan Dal, the Apna Dal faction led by Krishna Patel and Jayant Chowdhury’s Rashtriya Lok Dal.

So far, the BJP has an alliance with the Nishad Party, the Apna Dal faction led by Union Minister Anupriya Patel, and the ‘hissari morcha’ – a grouping of seven OBC-specific eastern UP parties.