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Ramveer Upadhyay, BSP's prominent Brahmin face, resigns

Upadhyay, who had been with the party for 25 years, is a four-term MLA

mayawati-pti (File) BSP supremo Mayawati addresses a press conference at her residence in Lucknow | PTI

Ramveer Upadhyay, a prominent Brahmin face of the Bahujan Samaj Party, resigned from the party today.

Upadhyay, who had been with the party for 25 years, is a four-term MLA.

In his resignation letter addressed to party chief Mayawati, Upadhyay wrote that the party had not carried out any evaluation despite the losses in the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections; and the 2012 and 2017 Vidhan Sabha elections.

 “I had demanded this from time to time. I had also apprised you that we would not win seats as per expectation in the 2019 Lok Sabha election as we have lost even our cadre vote”, he wrote.

In May 2019, Upadhyay the minister for power in the Mayawati cabinet, had been expelled from the BSP for anti-party activities.

 Upadhyay alleged that the BSP had veered off the ideals and principles of its founder Kanshiram.

The MLA from Sadabad said, “There is no place for honest party workers anymore. Our leader is inaccessible and isolated”.

Upadhyay’s disenchantment from the party is not new. His family members had joined the BJP over the last year. His suspension from the party was for openly supporting rival candidates in the 2019 elections.

In the 2017 elections, the BSP had won 19 seats in the Vidhan Sabha. Since then, 11 MLAs have been sacked from the party- taking the BSP to its lowest ever count in the state assembly.

Brahmins are among the castes that the BSP is targeting to improve its performance in the forthcoming Vidhan Sabha polls. The party’s low key election campaign has included Brahmin sammelans across the state under the watch of party general secretary, Satish Chandra Mishra.

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