Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger daughter-in-law Aparna Bisht Yadav made her much-speculated move to BJP on Wednesday, becoming the third member of the extended clan to walk the saffron path and creating an opportunity for her new party to highlight a possible poll-eve schism in UP’s political dynasty.
Aparna, who joined BJP at the party headquarters in New Delhi, cited “national interest” as her priority and praised PM Narendra Modi for setting the agenda with schemes targeting cleanliness, women’s empowerment and employment.
Although there was no announcement about her getting an election ticket, sources said Aparna was likely to be fielded in the Bakhshi Ka Talab seat as the one she had been vying for — Lucknow Cantonment — was a crowded field in terms of prospective candidates. “Welcome Aparna ji into the BJP family,” CM Yogi Adityanath tweeted along with a picture of her flanked by him and BJP president JP Nadda at the party’s national headquarters.
Aparna, the wife of Mulayam’s younger son Prateek Yadav by his second wife Sadhna Gupta, follows in the footsteps of the SP founder’s niece Sandhya Yadav, who joined BJP in 2017, and Sirsaganj MLA Hari Om Yadav, uncle-in-law of Mulayam’s grandnephew and Mainpuri MP Tej Pratap. Hari Om switched to BJP last week, coinciding with an exodus of saffron party legislators to SP. Former MLA Pramod Gupta, a brother-in-law of Mulayam’s wife, is expected to join BJP soon.
Congratulating his sister-in-law for joining BJP, SP national president and former CM Akhilesh Yadav said “Netaji (Mulayam)” tried hard to convince her not to make the switch, but she decided to go ahead with it.
“I extend my good wishes (to her),” Akhilesh said. “I am happy that this way, our samajwadi (socialist) ideology has reached other political parties. I hope our socialist ideology will help save the Constitution and democracy there (in BJP).”
On whether Aparna jumped ship because she was denied a poll ticket by SP, Akhilesh said the process of selecting candidates was still under way. “Tickets are given on the basis of ground reports about a candidate and on the basis of the party’s internal survey,” he said.
Aparna had contested the Lucknow Cantonment seat as an SP candidate in 2017 and lost to BJP’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi.
For Akhilesh, who had grabbed the bragging rights a week ago after he got three disgruntled ex-BJP ministers from the backward castes and over half a dozen MLAs to his side, Aparna’s exit is more of a psychological blow than any setback on the ground, sources said.
The buzz in BJP about cracks in the Yadav clan is a throwback to the 2017 assembly poll run-up, when the rift between Akhilesh and his uncle Shivpal Yadav came out in the open. Shivpal quit SP to form Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L), allowing BJP to brand Akhilesh “incapable” of managing the state as he couldn’t even solve a family dispute.
While Shivpal and Akhilesh have buried the hatchet and announced that PSP (L) would contest the ensuing elections under the SP symbol, deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya harked back to the 2017 rift on Wednesday to suggest that history might repeat itself with another member of the clan switching to BJP.
