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Rebel Congress lawmaker Aditi Singh, BSP MLA Bandana Singh join BJP
In 2017, the two women MLAs were elected from Congress, Samajwadi Party bastions which the BJP has now set its sights on
Rebel Congress lawmaker from Rae Bareli (Sadar) assembly seat Aditi Singh, 34, along with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Bandana Singh joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Lucknow on Wednesday.
Both women are first-time lawmakers and had won the 2017 UP assembly polls from politically key constituencies. Aditi Singh is from Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituency which Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has been winning since 2004 and which the BJP has now set its sights on. Bandana Singh is the MLA from Sagri in Azamgarh, the Lok Sabha constituency of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Though part of a larger plan to unsettle the Congress and the SP in their bastions in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, BJP leaders admit that the joining of these two women MLAs has an immediate relevance: the 2022 UP assembly elections.
“So far, Priyanka Gandhi, who has been very active hasn’t revealed, if she would contest the 2022 UP polls and from where? Chances are that she might settle for the only surviving family bastion in Rae Bareli and if that happens, we have our plans in place. If that doesn’t happen, we will be better prepared for 2024 in this region. As for the SP, its chief Akhilesh Yadav had, after denying plans to contest 2022 elections, subsequently dropped hints that he might. If he does contest, or fields his wife Dimple, then of course, Azamgarh, where SP has an impressive track record, could be an obvious choice for them. If nothing else, these opposition names would help build atmosphere against the Congress, SP and the BSP,” a BJP leader said.
UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, too, while keeping mum on if the party would field the two on the BJP ticket in forthcoming 2022 UP polls, did admit that the women lawmakers from the opposition were key takeaways that his party would capitalise on.
“Two popular women lawmakers have joined the BJP, one to take on Sonia and Priyanka and the other for Akhilesh and Dimple Yadav,” he said.
Priyanka Gandhi had recently launched the Congress campaign, promising 40% tickets to women in 2022 UP polls, but the state BJP chief said the joining of women from opposition ranks was proof which party had done more for women empowerment.
Azamgarh has been a Samajwadi Party bastion as the party had won nine of the 10 assembly seats in 2012 and even in the subsequent BJP wave in 2017 UP polls, it had won five assembly seats there. Bandana Singh’s husband Sarvesh had contested the 2007 polls on Samajwadi Party ticket and had joined the BSP in 2010. In 2012, he contested as BSP candidate and lost to the SP. In 2013, Sarvesh was murdered after which Bandana Singh had contested the 2017 elections and won as a BSP MLA. BSP chief Mayawati had suspended Bandana Singh and six other party MLAs in October 2020 after they opposed the nomination of the party’s official candidate Ramji Gautam for the elections to the Rajya Sabha.
“I am very impressed with Modi-Yogi,” said Aditi Singh who had resisted the BJP wave in the 2017 UP elections by winning her seat. The BJP made inroads in Rae Bareli by winning three of the five assembly seats for the first time in 2017 elections. In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP got Congress MLC Dinesh Pratap Singh, a key aide of Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli, to defect to BJP and later made him contest against Sonia. The BJP staged a major upset, defeating the then Congress chief Rahul Gandhi from adjoining Amethi Lok Sabha constituency.
In Rae Bareli, though Dinesh Pratap Singh lost to Sonia, he later played a key role in BJP win in the panchayat polls in the Congress bastion, party leaders admitted. Aditi Singh, who was given ‘Y’ category security by the Yogi Adityanath government had praised the abrogation of Article 370, granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir by the BJP government.
She had in 2019 also attended the 36-hour assembly session convened by UP BJP government to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi despite the fact that all major opposition parties, including the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress, had boycotted the special session.
“We aren’t upset at these developments because with opportunists out, we can safely surmise that those who have remained are true soldiers of the Congress party. The party has suffered due to black sheep, which remained within and harmed the party,” said Congress leader Zeeshan Haider.
