UP: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), preparing for next year’s Lok Sabha elections, on Monday accepted several prominent Opposition Party Leaders, including former ministers, former MPs and former MLAs, along with their supporters into the party.

Manish Dixit, the BJP state media, said on Monday that at the party’s state headquarters, BJP state president Bhupendra Singh Chowdhary and both deputy chief ministers of the government of Uttar Pradesh, Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, former MP Rajpal Saini (Muzaffarnagar), who left the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), former minister of the Samajwadi party, Saheb Singh Saini (Saharanpur) ), Former SP Member of Parliament Anshul Verma (Hardoi), Former SP MLA Su Shama Patel (Jaunpur), Former SP Lok Sabha Candidate Shalini Yadav from Varanasi, Former Minister Jagdish Sonkar (Jaunpur), Former MLA Gulab Saroj (Jaunpur), Former Congress Media Chairman Rajeev Bakshi (Luckknow), Former BSP Chairman from Agra, District Cooperative Bank Gangadhar Kushwaha, Former SP District Panchayat President Jitendra Mishra of Hamirpur, former panchayat president of SP district of Hapur Satyapal Yadav of Hapur Several prominent leaders, including Sunita Yadav, former district panchayat president of Pa, were granted BJP membership.

Most of the leaders who joined the BJP on Monday are from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community. Recently, after prominent OBC leaders Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (Subhaspa) chief and former minister Om Prakash Rajbhar joined the National Democratic Alliance and former minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA Dara Singh Chauhan (Ghosi-Mau) joined the BJP, it is considered a major blow to the opposition of the ruling party. (Language)

Edited by: Ravindra Gupta