UP BJP has another row on hands: Seven-time MLA accuses party worker of ‘murder plot’

As per Fateh Bahadur, 55, Rajeev Ranjan Chaudhary, the son of BJP zilla panchayat member of Ward No. 15, Gorakhpur, Saroj Devi, is conspiring to kill him, has hired people for the job and raised Rs 1 crore for it. Fateh Bahadur, who incidentally has long enjoyed Y-plus security cover, says he approached the district SSP and met Adityanath, and was promised all help by him. He says he also wrote to both Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president J P Nadda on the issue.

While the Gorakhpur police told The Indian Express that an inquiry is on, Fateh Bahadur said he hadn’t heard anything from the authorities. “Nearly a fortnight has passed (since the complaint), and so far, nothing has been communicated to me about the progress of my case.”

Chaudhary has denied Fateh Bahadur’s allegations, accusing him of trying to “frame” him and his family due to political rivalry. He told The Indian Express that differences arose between them after the 2023 Nagar Panchayat chairman elections, which Chaudhary’s wife lost by a narrow margin. “The MLA had asked us not to contest. Since I did, he framed false cases against me,” said Chaudhary, who calls himself a BJP worker.

Fateh Badahur’s father Vir Bahadur Singh was the CM from 1985-88, heading a Congress government in the post-Indira Gandhi assassination sympathy wave that powered the party to victories across the country. In UP Assembly polls, the Congress won 268 of the 425 seats. While the party first picked incumbent CM N D Tiwari as CM, after six months, it replaced him with Vir Bahadur.

But Vir Bahadur spent a little less than three tumultuous years in power, a period that included the opening of the locks at the Ram temple-Babri Masjid complex and communal tensions. Vir Bahadur was then replaced by the Congress and Tiwari brought back. Vir Bahadur served as Union minister for a year between 1988 and 1989, when the Congress lost power to a Janata Dal coalition.

Fateh Bahadur also started his political career with the Congress. Apart from that one term as a Congress MLA, he has won four times on a BJP ticket, and once each as an Independent and a BSP candidate. Between 2007 and 2012, he was the Forest Minister in the Mayawati government.

In the last two Assembly elections, of 2017 and 2022, Fateh Bahadur won as the BJP candidate from Campierganj, with his last victory margin 40,000-plus votes against the Samajwadi Party’s Kajal Nishad. However, he has not held a ministerial post in either of Adityanath’s terms.

Referring to the assassination attempt on US presidential nominee Donald Trump recently, Fateh Bahadur says: “When I have identified the person behind the planning of my murder to the police, why has no action been taken against him?”

Gorakhpur SSP Gaurav Grover said an inquiry was on, including by the local Special Task Force. Statements of several persons have been recorded and Fateh Bahadur’s security beefed up, the SSP said.