Prominent OBC face Swami Prasad Maurya now leaves SP, likely to float own party

About a week after resigning from his party post alleging “discrimination” and accusing Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav of ignoring the Pichda, Dalit and Alpasankhyak (PDA), Swami Prasad Maurya quit the party on Tuesday.

Sources said he could float his outfit in New Delhi on February 22, like he had done in 2016 after leaving the BSP.

A prominent non-Yadav OBC face of Uttar Pradesh politics, Maurya (70) had quit the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet ahead of the 2022 Assembly elections and joined the SP. He was known to take on the SP for around two decades, initially as a member of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and later the BJP.

More recently, he hit the headlines last year for calling for the removal of certain verses of the Ramcharitmanas as they had “objectionable language”. He was later booked for hurting religious sentiments.

Once a close confidant of BSP chief Mayawati and a vocal face of the party, Maurya was not only made minister in every BSP government — in 1997, 2002 and 2007 — but was also Leader of Opposition every time the BSP was out of power. He was even made the BSP national general secretary, effectively making him No. 2 to Mayawati in the party hierarchy.

In 2016, while he was Leader of the Opposition, Maurya left the BSP, alleging “auctioning” of party tickets, an allegation refuted by Mayawati who, in turn, alleged that Maurya had quit because his son Utkrist and daughter Sanghmitra did not get tickets for the seats they had allegedly lobbied for.

He then formed his own party and named it the Loktantrik Bahujan Manch.

Maurya later joined the BJP, just before the 2017 Assembly polls, claiming that he was impressed with the work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the “weaker sections” of the society.

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