In a severe jolt to Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), OBC leader Dara Singh Chauhan resigned on Wednesday from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet. Chauhan is the sixth leader to leave the party in two days. However, two MLAs from Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) have joined the BJP.

Earlier, as BJP leaders brainstormed in Delhi on the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Swami Prasad Maurya, a prominent Other Backward Class (OBC) leader, had quit the state cabinet.

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On Wednesday, BJP MLA Avtar Singh Bhadana quit the party and is joining the Rashtriya Lok Dal, an SP ally.

Three other BJP MLAs announced their resignation from the party, seemingly in Maurya’s support.

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BJP MLAs Tindwari’s Brajesh Prajapati, Tilhar’s Roshan Lal Varma and Bilhaur’s Bhagwati Sagar had earlier announced that they were leaving the party.

However, two Uttar Pradesh MLAs Naresh Saini from the Congress and Hari Om Yadav from the SP joined the BJP on Wednesday, a welcome development for the ruling party as it deals with the sudden defections from its ranks.

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Uttar Pradesh will go to poll in seven phases to elect 403 MLAs between February 10 and March 7. The counting of votes will be held on March 10.

In 2017, the BJP scripted history in Kanpur Rural’s Bilhaur. Veteran politician Bhagwati Sagar led the party to a win and, for the first time ever, the BJP had a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the constituency.

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However, Sagar who has now resigned, is one of the many ministers and MLAs to leave the ruling party in the state ahead of the high octane Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

Bhagwati Sagar started out with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and has been an MLA thrice and a minister twice. In 1996, he won from Bilhaur for the first time on a BSP ticket. In 2007, he won from Maharanipur in Jhansi on BSP ticket again.

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Bhagwati Sagar had on several instances pulled up the Kanpur Police and expressed his unhappiness with the way the local administration functioned in his constituency. On November 23, when BJP president JP Nadda held a rally in Kanpur, Sagar chose not to sit with his fellow MLAs.

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However, some locals suggest that the Brahmin vote share seemed to be slipping away from Bhagwati Prasad due to some of the instances in his constituency and since it’s a reserved seat for Scheduled Castes (SC), many believe it might become difficult for him to retain his vote share.