ON JULY 3, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi and sought his “guidance” on organisational affairs, amid speculation that the script for an alliance with Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) was ready. After a week, Rajbhar and his party MLA from Jakhania, Bedi Ram, met Pathak at his residence in Lucknow. Six days later, Rajbhar was called to Delhi to meet Shah. A couple of days after that meeting, the BJP and SBSP formally announced their alliance. Rajbhar will also attend a meeting of NDA constituent parties in Delhi on Tuesday. Sources in the BJP as well as the SBSP said that UP Deputy CM Pathak and State Transport Minister Dayashankar Singh both played the key roles in facilitating Rajbhar's return to the BJP fold. Significantly, Pathak (Brahmin) and Singh (Thakur) are both upper caste leaders who were frequently in touch with OBC leader Rajbhar and kept urging him to ally with the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Sources pointed out that Rajbhar was in “regular contact” with Pathak and Singh even after forging an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) to contest the 2022 Assembly polls. According to sources, during meetings with Rajbhar, Pathak often emphasised that he should join hands with the BJP again. The two leaders share a “good friendship”, said a BJP leader who said a major indication about a “likely alliance” came when Rajbhar and Pathak reached the Vidhan Sabha campus together to cast their votes in the Legislative Council polls in May this year and also left in the same car. Sources claimed that in that poll - for two seats of MLCs - SBSP MLAs voted in support of the BJP's nominees and both won. In October last year when Pathak visited Ballia to attended the inaugural function of a school, it was Rajbhar who presided over the event. Pathak’s efforts to reach out to Rajbhar were aided by another BJP minister, Dayashankar Singh. Sources said that a few days after the 2022 Assembly poll, Rajbhar met some senior BJP leaders in Delhi — a meeting that was coordinated by Dayashankar Singh. Singh was a member of the BJP's joining committee before the 2022 Assembly polls in UP. In March this year, Singh visited Rajbhar's residence for a “courtesy meeting” over tea. After the meeting, Rajbhar said that the meeting to discuss the development of a bus station in his Assembly constituency, Zahoorabad. Singh's assembly constituency Ballia Nagar is near Zahoorabad and Rajbhar's residence and party office is in Ballia district. Sources in the BJP said Rajbhar and Singh met often both in Lucknow and Ballia but both sides steered clear of sharing photographs and details of these with the media. Whenever mediapersons asked Rajbhar about his meetings with Pathak and Singh, the SBSP president played down the matter and said these meetings were to discuss development projects in his own constituency and in the areas of other SBSP MLAs. Sources also said that Singh was the person who coordinated between the BJP and Rajbhar for the alliance in the 2017 UP elections. The alliance was announced in 2016, a few months after Singh began talks with Rajbhar on the matter and asked him to join forces with the BJP. Rajbhar, however, did not do so and insisted that he would contest on the symbol of his own party and in alliance with the BJP; the sources said. The SBSP won four seats in the 2017 Assembly polls. Rajbhar was inducted into the Yogi Adityanath-led Cabinet but he resigned and broke off ties with the saffron party after a couple of years over issues faced by the OBC community.
