Talks on with BJP for alliance, says Apna Dal’s Krishna group

At a time when the Apna Dal (Sonelal), has expressed its unhappiness with the ruling party’s state leadership, its other faction the Apna Dal (Krishna Patel group), offered the olive branch to the BJP and lauded the Yogi Adityanath government here on Sunday. The Apna Dal (Sonelal) is an alliance partner of the BJP.

Apna Dal (Krishna Patel group) chief Krishna Patel said talks were going on with the BJP for an alliance in the coming Lok Sabha election. She appreciated the measures taken by the Yogi government to free the state of the stray cattle menace.

Patel said her party was the original Apna Dal launched by her husband Sonelal Patel. She said the splinter group run by her daughter Anupriya Patel, a union minister, was trying to hijack the party. Anupriya had made her husband Ashish Singh national president of Apna Dal (S), which was illegal, Krishna Patel.

Krishna Patel also said she was elected party president after her husband’s death. Anupriya Patel won the Mirzapur Lok Sabha seat on the Apna Dal symbol in 2014 and became a union minister from the party quota, Krishna Patel said.

Later, she, along with her husband, announced the launch of a separate party, which claimed to be the original Apna Dal, Krishna Patel said. “Majority of Sonelal Patel’s supporters are with me,” she said. Apna Dal MP from Pratapgarh Harivansh Singh, who was present at the press conference, said Krishna Patel was the national president of the Apna Dal. Ashish Patel was trying to create confusion among the supporters of Sonelal by launching a splinter group, he said. Majority of the party office bearers and workers were with Krishna Patel, he said.

Singh said Apna Dal had urged CM Yogi to name the new government medical college coming up at Pratapgarh after Sonelal Patel as mark of respect for the later leader who worked for the welfare of the weaker sections