Lucknow: SBSP chief and Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister Om Prakash Rajbhar, who has been voicing his dissent against the BJP and has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the coalition with the UP government, on Wednesday dared chief minister Yogi Adityanath to throw him out of the cabinet.
Rajbhar has been demanding implementing sub-quota for OBCs ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
“It has been 22 months since the BJP government was formed in UP. I dare CM Yogi Adityanath today to throw me out of the cabinet. I will continue my fight for the poor. I am the only 72-year-old minister who is fighting against a chief minister,” Rajbhar told reporters in the Palia area of Lakhimpur Kheri.
“I am not asking for any mining lease, I am just asking for some arrangement for the OBCs and Dalits. If you go towards eastern and central Uttar Pradesh, you will find that the condition of the government is quite bad. I have given time till February 24, after which I will take some concrete decision,” said Rajbhar, who is a key ally of the Yogi Adityanath led government in the state.
Answering a question on the issue of Ram Mandir, he said, “People in power are responsible for Ram Lala in a makeshift temple. The poor don’t know that these people are more interested in bagging the power in Lucknow and Delhi. People are being deliberately diverted to mandir-masjid issues. The government can spent 5,000 crore on Kumbh Mela but doesn’t seem to have money to spend on educational infrastructure in the state.”
The Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj party chief had also announced that his party may go solo on all the 80 seats in the state in the general elections. “If BJP decides to keep us out of the coalition, we will be prepared to go solo on all 80 Lok Sabha seats,” Rajbhar had said.
Rajbhar’s party has four MLAs in the UP Assembly. He has often been critical of Adityanath and has claimed that his party was not getting the ‘due respect’. Before that, he had attacked the UP government for renaming the cities of Mughalsarai and Faizabad. “They say they (the cities) were named after the Mughals. They have national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, UP minister Mohsin Raza, three Muslim faces of the BJP, change their names first,” he had said.
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