For its Dalit outreach, SP puts forward Ayodhya leader with long party, electoral record

However, this limelight now is new for the 77-year-old. Before they left for Kolkata where he was seated on the dais next to Akhilesh at the party’s national executive, Akhilesh also tweeted a selfie of himself with Prasad and his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav. Akhilesh then kept Prasad close to him during the entire Kolkata tour, and he was also present when the SP chief met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at her residence.

An MLA from Milkipur (SC-reserved) seat in Ayodhya district, Prasad has served as minister in six state governments, four times as Cabinet minister, including the previous Akhilesh government. He first served as a minister in the Ram Naresh Yadav-led Janata Party government of 1977, when he won his first election from Sohawal as a Janata Party candidate. He was also a minister in the government led by Babu Banarasi Das.

A law graduate from Lucknow University, Prasad entered active politics at the age of 21, contesting his first Assembly election from Sohawal in 1974, when he lost as a candidate of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal, founded by Chaudhary Charan Singh, whom he considered as his ‘political father’.

During the Emergency, when he was the Faizabad district co-convener of the anti-Emergency Sangharsh Samiti, Prasad was arrested. His mother passed away while he was in jail, and he couldn’t get parole to attend her last rites. A trained lawyer, Prasad quit it after the Emergency, before becoming a full-time politician.

Later, in 1981, Prasad, then a general secretary of both the Lok Dal and Janata Party, couldn’t attend the last rites of his father, as he was away counting votes for the Amethi Lok Sabha bypolls. Rajiv Gandhi was at the time contesting his first election from there as the Congress nominee, with Sharad Yadav the Lok Dal candidate against him. Prasad was the Lok Dal polling agent, and under strict instructions from Charan Singh not to leave the counting room. Through the counting of votes for seven days — this was a time before EVMs — Prasad remained at the counting centre, despite hearing of his father’s demise.

When Mulayam launched the SP in 1992, Prasad was inducted as its national secretary and member of its central parliamentary board. Later, he was promoted as its national general secretary, a post in which he is currently serving his fourth term.

In 1996, he contested as the SP candidate from the Akbarpur Lok Sabha seat, but lost. He has had more luck in Assembly elections, losing only twice in nine contests — in 1991, when he was the Janata Party candidate from Sohawal, and in 2017, when he fought as an SP nominee from Milkipur. A father of two sons, who are also SP leaders, Prasad, in his own words, has been jailed or taken into preventive custody around 60 times so far for a variety of reasons, from leading movements of farmers or students.

SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhry said Prasad was well-regarded and respected within the party like all its senior leaders. However, sources admitted the party is hoping to add Dalits to its Yadav and Muslim vote bank, making it a winning combination.

Up ahead is an autobiography by Prasad, which is yet to go to print.

When asked if the party was projecting him as a Dalit face, Prasad said, “I was never a leader of Dalits. I am the leader of Sarva Samaj. I get support from all castes and communities including Pandits (Brahmins), Thakurs, OBCs, Pasis and Dalits, as I work for all.”

That the SP message was hitting home was clear from the sharp attack by Mayawati on the party Sunday, calling the SP “anti-Dalit” and that Dalits should remain cautious about the SP’s strategy. She also said that the SP was trying to weaken the BSP instead of fighting the BJP. Earlier, Mayawati had reminded that the last Akhilesh Yadav government in UP (2012-17) had changed the name of Bhimrao Ambedkar Park, Sant Ravidas Nagar and Manyawar Kanshiram Ji Nagar districts and Manyavar Sri Kanshiram Urdu Arabi-Farsi University. “After his (Kanshi Ram’s) death, the SP government led by Mulayam Singh Yadav had declined announcing a state-wide mourning and also did not pay tributes to him. “These are the black spots on SP and the people are not going to forgive it,” she said, adding “People know everything and hence SP’s cheap politics of ‘jod-tod’ is not going to work,” Mayawati had said. She also said Dalits and Most Backwards were already cautious of the SP and Muslims too were not going to be trapped in SP’s tactics. er in UP.

BJP spokesperson Jugal Kishore, a Dalit, said that the BSP’s Dalit votes will never go to the SP but come over to the BJP, because Dalits remember the atrocities the SP had done on them in the past and how the party had “insulted” Bhimrao Ambedkar and Kanshiram. Dalits are looking at the BJP with hope and the BJP should also make some efforts to connect those voters, he said.