While the BJP is comfortably placed to send seven members, its eighth candidate, Sanjay Seth, will need the support from the opposition ranks. The NDA has 288 votes in the 403-member assembly. Seth needs eight extra votes, meaning that only cross-voting can help him win.
As it has 108 MLAs, the SP needs three extra votes to ensure victory of its third candidate. Though two votes from the Congress are likely to go in its favour, the SP will have to depend on outsiders for the other vote. Umashankar Singh, the lone BSP MLA, is unlikely to vote for the SP.
On Tuesday, the SP state president Naresh Uttam Patel met the Kunda strongman at his residence and sought his support for the Rajya Sabha polls. The ‘bahubali’ is said to have remarked that he had devoted 20 years to the SP and that it is not just a political party for him.
A day later, BJP state president Bhupendra Chaudhary along with UP cooperative minister JPS Rathore met the Kunda MLA at his residence where, sources said, that the Rajya Sabha polls were discussed.
A JD(L) insider privy to the talks told ThePrint that both parties have reached out for support and that a possibility of an alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha polls is also being explored.
While the party is keen on an alliance with the NDA, the JD (L) insider said, it is also exploring a possibility of an alliance with the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP.
“Our party has always desired to work with those with the same ideology and the NDA remains our first preference. However, the SP too is open to ally with our party. Our president will soon take a call,” the JD(L) insider said, adding that the SP is willing to leave the Pratapgarh parliamentary seat for Raja Bhaiya.
The Kunda strongman is also seeking Kaushambi too, JD(L) sources say.
Former Kaushambi MP and JD(L) leader Shailendra Kumar told ThePrint that he is preparing to contest from Kaushambi. “I can assure that we will fight in an alliance,” he said.
On his part, Raja Bhaiya, who was elected as an independent MLA with support from BJP in 1993 and 1996 and with the SP’s help in 2002, 2007 and 2012, has refrained from making any clear statement.
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Raja Bhaiya-SP ties
The SP cosying up with Raja Bhaiya is a departure from the hostility that was seen in the 2022 UP election as the opposition party fielded a candidate in Kunda after two decades.
At a poll rally in Kunda, Akhilesh targeted Raja Bhaiya with a cutting “Kundi band kar do (Close the door latch)” remark, urging people to “vote for change”. This led to Raja Bhaiya declaring that he would not let the Samajwadi Party form a government.
An influential member of Akhilesh’s state cabinet till 2017, Raja Bhaiya fell out with the SP chief following which Akhilesh stated during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections that he wouldn’t associate with the Kunda strongman in the future.
Raja Bhaiya, who has always contested as an Independent, fought the assembly polls from Kunda for the seventh time in 2022 on a ticket of JD(L) which he floated in 2018. The party had fielded 18 candidates that year.
In the run-up to the UP election, the attack on the SP’s Kunda candidate Gulshan Yadav’s cavalcade sparked a war of words, with Akhilesh tweeting that breaking glass (of windowpane) won’t break their spirit.
Later, on 1 March, 2022, Akhilesh tweeted a video showing a youth pressing a button on behalf of a female voter. While the tweet was deleted soon after, Raja Bhaiya hit back highlighting that the video was from the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Haryana.
Once declared a “terrorist” by the Mayawati government in January 2003, Raja Bhaiya, a Rajput, comes from the erstwhile ruling family of Kunda. In Pratapgarh district, within which Kunda falls, he enjoys immense clout.
Despite facing criminal charges, Raja Bhaiya has served in ministries in three BJP governments and two SP governments.
In an interview to ThePrint in 2022, the Kunda strongman had said that it was not necessary to always be in the government. “I was not a minister in every government. I was not a minister during the Mayawati rule. I was not there in 1993 and 1996. So, it is not like that…I have got the chance of being in the ruling side and the Opposition too,” he had said.
In 2002, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati accused him of trying to topple her government and jailed him under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
A raid at his mansion in Kunda is said to have led to the recovery of weapons as well as skeletal remains from a lake spread over 600 acres. The charges were vehemently denied by Raja Bhaiya.
Released from jail after the Mayawati government fell in 2003 and made a minister in the Mulayam Singh Yadav government, he was again jailed by Mayawati on a murder charge after she came to power in 2007.
After Yogi Adityanath came to power in 2017, there were speculations that ties with the BJP would collapse as he was denied a ministerial berth. However, Raja Bhaiya praised Yogi Adityanath, saying his performance was better in many spheres than the previous governments.
An SP leader said that though Raja Bhaiya has floated his party, he supports Yogi Adityanath and has met him several times. “He may not be in the government but they (Raja and BJP) support each other. He has met Yogi several times and because he is a Rajput leader, the BJP and Raja Bhaiya help each other,” the SP leader told ThePrint.
‘Kunda ka gunda’
Former chief minister and BJP veteran Kalyan Singh had famously dubbed Raja Bhaiya as ‘Kunda ka gunda’ (the goon of Kunda)” for his criminal antecedents. Yet, in 1997, he made him a minister.
He then went on to serve in the BJP governments led by Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh.
In August 2003, Mulayam dropped the POTA charges against Raja Bhaiya even before he proved majority in the assembly. Later, he inducted him into the cabinet after his release.
In 2012, when Mulayam’s son Akhilesh formed the government, Raja Bhaiya was given the prisons as well as the food and civil supplies ministries. He, however, resigned after his name surfaced in the alleged conspiracy to murder Pratapgarh DSP Zia-ul Haq, who was shot dead on 2 March, 2013.
While the CBI gave a clean chit to him in 2013, the slain DSP’s wife had challenged it and the Allahabad High Court quashed the order in 2022. The CBI is now reinvestigating the case on the directions of the Supreme Court.
A BJP leader said that Raja Bhaiya is seen as a ‘royal’ and strongman, and draws popularity from the tag. “He is someone who is always in the news, whether for good or bad reasons. He has a certain glamour, and the more he is attacked, the more he is news. Also, he is popular among the Rajputs in Pratapgarh district as well as some pockets of Kaushambi,” the BJP leader said.
Raja Bhaiya’s diehard supporters vouch for his ‘janta darbar’ (public hearings) and the annual community marriage event that he holds every year. He is the ‘pride of Kunda’, they say.
“Yes, he is a strongman, but he is a messiah, too. In janta darbars, there is no bias on the basis of caste or creed…. Those belonging to the scheduled and backward castes especially get quick resolution,” said Surendra Singh from Kunda, who calls himself a supporter of the bahubali leader.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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