Having failed to secure a BJP ticket from Lucknow Cantonment (Cantt) seat for the ensuing Uttar Pradesh assembly election, party’s Allahabad MP Rita Bahuguna Joshi’s son Mayank Joshi is likely to jump ship and join the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday evening.
Mayank’s joining Akhilesh Yadav-led SP would be another jolt to the BJP after about a dozen MLAs, including three ministers, quit the party earlier this month.
While the three ministers
– Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan and Dharam Singh Saini
– belonged to the OBC category, Mayank is a Brahmin.
His crossing over to the SP would deal a blow to the already bruised anti-Brahmin image of the BJP.
A section of the Brahmins feel the BJP ignored them and promoted Thakurs instead in the state.
On Monday, SP spokesperson Fakhrul Hasan Chaand said in a post in Hindi on micro-blogging platform Koo:
“Rita Bahuguna Joshi’s son Mayank may join Samajwadi Party today evening.
A meeting of prominent SP leaders from Lucknow has been convened at 4 pm.”
Rita had sought a ticket for her son from Lucknow Cantt saying that he had been working in the constituency since 2009.
On January 18, she confirmed that Mayank Joshi had applied for a ticket from Lucknow Cantt.
She had even offered to resign her Lok Sabha seat if the BJP wished to be strict with giving a ticket to only one person per family.
She wrote to BJP president JP Nadda and offered to resign in lieu of Mayank getting a ticket from Lucknow Cantt.
However, she had clarified that she would not quit the BJP and would always continue working for the party.
While Raj Babbar quit the Congress and joined SP on January 28, Fakhrul Hasan Chaand had written this on Koo a day in advance.
On January 27, he said in his post: “A former state president of the Congress, former Samajwadi leader and actor may soon become a Samajwadi again.”
Last week, SP founder and Akhilesh Yadav’s father Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger daughter-in-law Aparna Bisht Yadav quit the party and joined the BJP in a much-hyped event in Delhi.
She had contested the 2017 UP assembly election on an SP ticket against Rita Bahuguna Joshi from Lucknow Cantt and lost.
According to reports, the BJP was likely to field Aparna Yadav from Lucknow Cantt.
