Healthy seat-sharing pact with BJP on Sanjay Nishad’s agenda
The Nishad community has a sizable presence in 37 Lok Sabha seats across UP, where it plays a major role in a candidate’s victory or defeat, says minister
LUCKNOW With Lok Sabha polls just a few months away, Nishad party president Sanjay Nishad has started presenting his party as a viable alliance partner for the NDA. He is hopeful of BJP accepting his demand of sparing some seats for his party in the 2024 polls.
Indicating towards the likelihood of a “healthy seat-sharing pact” with the BJP, he said: “I am hopeful that the BJP will accept the request of sparing some seats for us in the 2024 polls.”
“The Samajwadi Party lost the 2022 assembly polls due to the Nishad community. In that election, our community voted for the BJP. It has a sizable presence in 37 Lok Sabha seats across UP, where they play a major role in the candidate’s victory or defeat,” added Nishad.
Sanjay Nishad’s son, Praveen Nishad, won the 2018 Lok Sabha by-poll from Gorakhpur as a joint Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party candidate.
The Nishad party allied with the BJP in the 2019 national polls when Praveen Nishad was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Sant Kabir Nagar.
Commenting on SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar’s return to the NDA and his ability to remain in the limelight often, Nishad said: “I am not as outspoken as Rajbhar.”
Rajbhar is often in the news due to his political flip-flops, including the decision to join the NDA, setting aside all he had said about chief minister Yogi Adityanath at the time of parting ways with the BJP in May 2019.
