JOIN USAngry over being left out in Cabinet rejig, Nishad Party threatens to rethink alliance with BJP in UP
Livid over being left out in Wednesday's Cabinet reshuffle, the Nishad Party, a BJP ally in Uttar Pradesh, has accused the BJP of 'betrayal' and threatened to 'rethink' its alliance with the saffron party in the upcoming Assembly polls, which is barely nine months away.
''It's a betrayal...BJP will have to face electoral consequences if it continues to ignore our community,'' founder of the Nishad Party Sanjay Nishad said on Thursday.
"The Nishad community has already started deserting the BJP...it is disappointing that Praveen Nishad (Sanjay Nishad's son and MP from Sant Kabir Nagar district) was not inducted in the union ministry," he said.
He said that the Nishads (boatmen and fishermen) formed 18 per cent of the electorate in UP and could influence the outcome of the elections in as many as 160 seats.
The leader said that he had already conveyed his party's feelings to the senior BJP leaders, including its national president J P Nadda.
A few days back, Sanjay Nishad had threatened to walk out of the alliance if he was not assured of the deputy CM's post in the UP elections.
''If the BJP wants to return to power in UP after the 2022 Assembly polls, then it must project me as the deputy CM face,'' Sanjay Nishad had said.
Incidentally, Sanjay Nishad's son Praveen Nishad, as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party(SP), had defeated the BJP candidate from Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat in a bypoll in 2018 after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath resigned from there following his anointment as the CM.
In the 2019 LS polls, however, Praveen contested on the BJP ticket from Sant Kabir Nagar seat and emerged victorious. Since then, Nishad Party has been an ally of the saffron party.