Munquad Ali has represented BSP in Rajya Sabha for two terms.THE BAHUJAN Samaj Party (BSP) Wednesday replaced UP state president R S Kushwaha with former Rajya Sabha member and senior leader Munquad Ali. “Outgoing state chief Khushwaha has been appointed in the party’s central unit,” said a statement issued by the party.
Khushwaha was appointed as BSP’s state chief in May last year and had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Salempur, where he lost to the BJP’s Ravindra Kushwaha.
Hailing from Meerut, Munquad Ali, 57, has represented BSP in the Rajya Sabha for two terms since 2006. His term ended in April, 2018. He has held several important posts in the party. In November 2015, he was made the party’s in-charge for eastern Uttar Pradesh’s four divisions, including politically crucial Varanasi and Azamgarh. He had also held the post of the party’s national general secretary.
The statement added, “After appointing Munquad Ali as state chief, in order to maintain social engineering, the party has decided to make backward leader Shyam Singh Yadav the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha in place of Danish Ali.”
Yadav, a retired IAS officer, is a first-time MP from Jaunpur where he defeated BJP’s sitting MP Krishna Pratap Singh.
On Yadav’s appointment, a senior BSP leader said, “We give leaders from all communities equal opportunities to grow in the party.”
Meanwhile, the party also appointed MP from Ambedkar Nagar, Ritesh Pandey, as its deputy leader in Lok Sabha. “Girishchandra Jatav will continue to be chief whip,” the statement added. Pandey is among the young MPs who won the seat after defeating BJP’s Mukut Bihari Verma.
He was the BSP’s MLA from Jalalpur in Ambedkar Nagar. He is the son of senior BSP leader Rakesh Pandey, who was Ambedkar Nagar MP from 2009 to 2014.
In ‘social engineering’, a Dalit-Muslim formula
THE APPOINTMENT of a Muslim leader as the state BSP president for the first time could be seen as a strong political move by party chief Mayawati. Making Munquad Ali, her long-time, reliable party leader, as the state unit chief, she has sent a clear message that the BSP is eyeing the Dalit-Muslim votebank in the wake of the Samajwadi Party losing its grip on its core votebank, Muslims. The BSP has also tried to take an aim at the Samajwadi Party as it gears up to contest the Assembly bypolls for the first time by making a Yadav as the party’s leader in the Lok Sabha.
