Congress leader RPN Singh joins BJP, may contest against Swami Prasad Maurya

A day after being declared as one of the star campaigners for the party in the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, senior Congress leader and former union minister RPN Singh on Tuesday resigned from the grand old party and joined the BJP.

Singh, who joined the saffron party in the presence of state BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh and union ministers Dahrmendra Pradah and Anurag Thakur, said that it was a "new beginning" for him.

"I am eager to make my contribution for the development of the country under the able leadership and guidance of prime minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and J P Nadda," Singh said in a post.

Singh, who hails from Kushinagar district and was a minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet, was included in the list of the star campaigners of the Congress for the state on Monday.

According to sources, Singh could be nominated by the BJP from Padaruan assembly seat from where former UP minister Swami Prasad Maurya, who recently resigned from the BJP and joined the Samajwadi Party (SP), was likely to contest the polls.

Both Singh and Maurya hailed from the same region and had also contested against each other in the past. Singh had defeated Maurya in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls from Kushinagar. Maurya was then in the BSP. Maurya, however, defeated Singh's mother Mohini Devi from Padarauna assembly seat from where he was the MLA and vacated after being elected to Lok Sabha.

Singh lost two successive Lok Sabha polls from the seat in 2014 and 2019. Maurya had in the meantime joined the BJP and had become a minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet.

Sources said that Singh had been trying to join the BJP for the past few months but Maurya had opposed his entry into the saffron party. "Maurya's resignation from the BJP paved the way for his entry," said a state BJP leader here.

Reacting to Singh's induction in the BJP and the possibility of his contesting from Padarauna against him, Maurya said that even an ordinary SP worker could defeat Singh. "BJP will not gain anything from Singh's entry. He does not have any support base in the area," he added.

Sources in the BJP, however, said that Singh's entry into the party might not go down well with the Brahmin leaders in Kushinagar as he could emerge as a challenger to them in local politics. Singh had been defeated by BJP's Rajesh Pandey in the 2019 LS polls.

The politics in Kushinagar, which was part of the Gorakhpur division, revolved around Brahmin-Thakur and the OBCs. Several prominent Brahmin leaders from Gorakhpur division, including sitting BJP MLAs, have joined the SP in the run-up to the polls and they are likely to enter the electoral fray as the candidate of the party.

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