Amid speculation over his next move following his meeting with a senior BJP leader, OBC leader from Purvanchal Om Prakash Rajbhar has said he prefers Akhilesh Yadav as the next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and not Yogi Adityanath.
With this fresh statement, Mr. Rajbhar, president of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), has indicated he prefers an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) even though the door was also open for the BSP and the Congress.
“Yogi is a sadhu baba. He should stay in a temple. He is not a neta (leader or politician). Akhilesh Yadav is a neta,” Mr. Rajbhar told reporters in Varanasi.
While praising the work done in U.P. by Mr. Yadav during his government from 2012 to 2017, Mr. Rajbhar said, “Akhilesh should become the CM.”
Mr. Rajbhar also said that his goal was to defeat the BJP in 2022 and ruled out any alliance with it.
However, recently he met State BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh in Lucknow and the two OBC leaders discussed politics. Though even then Mr. Rajbhar dismissed prospects of an alliance with the BJP in 2022, he laced it with a condition that if the BJP fulfilled five demands laid down by him he would think about a tie-up.
One of his main demands was that the BJP nominate a Chief Minister from the OBC community, which indirectly meant he did not accept Mr. Adityanath as Chief Minister as he was born into the dominant Thakur caste.
Former BJP ally
A former ally of the BJP, Mr. Rajbhar turned rebel before the 2019 Lok Sabha election and was subsequently sacked as a Cabinet Minister in the State government following the results in which the BJP overcame a joint SP-BSP fight. Since then, Mr. Rajbhar formed the Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha, a group of small parties each with a base in some OBC caste.