Chandrashekhar Aazad: ‘I am Bahujan, not sheep that must follow … not with ruling side or Opposition in House’

Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) leader and Nagina MP Chandrashekhar Aazad, the party’s lone parliamentarian, has said he will remain an independent voice in the House and not join ranks with either the Treasury benches or the Opposition.

“We are not sheep that must follow. We are the hope of millions of our people,” Aazad said at The Indian Express Idea Exchange programme Friday.

“When I went to Parliament for the first time, I sat alone on a vacant bench. I was new, I didn’t know. I thought my friends in the Opposition would ask me to come and sit with them. I thought they would say, ‘We are both fighting against the BJP and we must work together.’ But after sitting there for three days, I realised no one was bothered that Chandrashekhar was sitting there,” he said.

He said when the Speaker elections came around, a senior Congress leader called him to say he must help them. “I told him, ‘Okay.’ But they didn’t press for a division (of votes). When that did not happen, the matter ended there. The leader went his way and I mine. Then I decided that I would neither be Right nor Left. I am Bahujan and will stand alone with my agenda. That is why I did not stage a walkout with the Opposition. We are not sheep that must follow. We are the hope of millions of our people. We may be small political workers but we are leaders of our society. If we keep following others, it will hurt the self-respect of our people,” he said.

Aazad, who won the Nagina seat in UP by 1.51 lakh votes, said he wanted an alliance with the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the state but neither agreed to give him Nagina.

“I feel they do not want an independent voice among the deprived. They want whoever comes up should stand with them or under them. So