“The party will have to do close scrutiny whether the defectors will be a boon or liability. There is a difference between being a leader from a caste and being the caste’s undisputed leader’’, said an SP leader who is set to lose his ticket to one of the defected legislators.Questions are now being raised over Akhilesh Yadav’s over-dependence on Om Prakash Rajbhar and political conjunction that with the desertion of OBC leaders such as Swami Prasad Maurya, Om Prakash Rajbhar, and Dharm Singh, a large chunk of backward leaders will come with them.At present, the defectors from the BJP are not influential beyond a few districts and their claim to transfer votes across the entire state is disputed by the Samajwadi party leaders. A former minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government said, “the OBCs leaders deserting the BJP were left with no options in the BJP and they flocked to the SP only to protect their political future’’.“Will this shift be enough to fill the vote gap of over 10 per cent between BJP and SP? Secondly, Akhilesh is being told that BJP’s victory in the last three elections in 2014, 2017, and 2019 was because of these turncoats. This means, the much-hyped Modi wave was non-existent at that time,” another senior SP leader observed.
Source link
