Navnath Padalkar
Nearly 50 office-bearers of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), including two former MLAs, have decided to quit the party and will submit a letter to party chief Prakash Ambedkar in a day or two.
Navnath Padalkar, who told The Indian Express that he has quit as the general secretary of the Maharashtra unit of VBA, Saturday said 50 office-bearers were signatories on the letter stating their intention to quit the VBA as “they have lost faith in the party leadership”.
The Ambedkar-led party had contested 47 out of 48 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM, which had led to the consolidation of Dalit and Muslim votes. In the assembly elections too, the VBA had contested 232 of 288 seats last year but won none. The party had received a setback when one of the founder members — Laxman Mane, a noted author — had quit the party ahead of the assembly polls.
While VBA wanted to create its own political space, there were rumblings of discontent as some party members were aspiring for the second rung after Ambedkar, according to party insiders. One group in the party had been trying to defect and, according to some senior office-bearer of VBA, it had been in talks with the Congress, BJP and Shiv Sena.
Padalkar, however, said it was mainly a sense of disillusionment within the rank and file that there was no justice for the depressed class within the party. “Be it the OBC or nomadic tribes, the main focus was to give power to the depressed classes. But this process has somehow not taken off,” Padalkar, who had contested the Lok Sabha seat from Baramati, told The Indian Express.
“We have the signatures of 50 of our office-bearers and will submit the letter to Prakash Ambedkar,” said Padalkar, who is one of the key members of VBA. Other signatories include Haridas Badhe, former MLA from Akola (East), Baliram Siraskar, former MLA from Balapur and Arjun Salgar, who had contested the Lok Sabha seat from Osmanabad. Salgar is also the chief of VBA’s observer committee.
Despite repeated attempts, VBA chief Prakash Ambedkar was unavailable for comment.