A week after the NDA outfits in Uttar Pradesh met in Delhi without the BJP at the NISHAD Party’s foundation day event, the latter’s chief and UP government minister Sanjay Nishad has dared the BJP to end the coalition if it felt allies had failed to “provide any benefits”. Sources said following the remarks on Tuesday, Nishad got a call from state BJP president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary that very night and was promised that the differences between the parties would be sorted out.
Sanjay Nishad said in Gorakhpur, “If they are not benefiting from an alliance with us, they should break it off. I want to tell this to the BJP. Why are they using minor leaders to attack us in foul language?”
At the Delhi event, Nishad had called for the gherao of the UP Assembly if the demand of the BJP allies for reservation for their communities was not met. Fellow UP Minister and Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) leader Om Prakash Rajbhar also backed the gherao call.
NISHAD Party leaders said their party chief’s latest remarks were down to the growing feeling among the BJP’s smaller allies — be it Nishads, Rajbhars, or Patels in central and East UP, or Jats in West UP — that, with the long term in mind, the BJP was building its own leadership among the Other Backward Class (OBC) communities which form their core voter base. The NISHAD Party’s apprehensions have been strengthened due to critical comments by BJP Nishad leaders such as Jai Prakash Nishad and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
The NISHAD community’s core base is the riverine castes of fisherfolk and boatmen. The community and its subcastes are estimated to have a significant presence in more than 150 Assembly constituencies in the state.
“The situation is such that we are more targeted by Nishad leaders within the BJP than from the Opposition,” said a NISHAD Party leader. “There are many Nishad leaders in the Samajwadi Party, such as MP Rambhual Nishad, MLC Rajpal Kashyap, and Kajal Nishad. But none of these leaders are targeting us directly on issues of the community. Instead, BJP leaders such as Jai Prakash Nishad, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, and Rajya Sabha MP Babu Ram Nishad are targeting us in their respective regions: districts in and around Gorakhpur, Fatehpur, and Bundelkhand.”
He added, “While J P Nishad has been constantly targeting us, recently Sadhvi Nirajan Jyoti said we were selling rivers. It is a wrong allegation. Earlier, just a few people were getting a lease on 200 km of a river for fishing. To allow it for smaller fishermen, the government decided to reduce the lease condition to 5-8 km. That is troubling these leaders.”
Following Sanjay Nishad’s comments, state BJP general secretary for organisation, apart from Bhupendra Chaudhary, Dharampal Singh, who was in Gorakhpur on Wednesday for a regional party meeting, also reached out to Nishad.
“We got to know about some of his issues from the media and we had a conversation. We are going to find the solutions to his problems. Our party is very disciplined. They had some issues with Jai Prakash Nishad, but we assure that no leader of our party has any intention to disrespect any leader of our allies. Whatever has been spoken is personal and the party does not associate itself with any of those statements,” Chaudhary told The Indian Express.
Chaudhary said the BJP respects and follows coalition dharma, “but one must understand that it is obvious that we do not agree on all issues”. They have their separate party and their own ideologies and agenda. We got together on certain common grounds to run the government. These are but minor issues,” the state BJP chief said.
However, J P Nishad, a former Rajya Sabha MP who joined the party from the BSP in 2018, stuck to his guns, saying he had been a popular figure long before Sanjay Nishad or his party. Last month, at a NISHAD Mahakumbh in Gorakhpur, he spoke about how certain leaders were trading the community’s votes for their benefit. This was read as a direct attack on Sanjay Nishad. The two leaders also locked horns at a circuit house in Gorakhpur, where they were holding separate press meetings.
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