Another Samajwadi Party legislator quits, joins BJP

In another blow to the Samajwadi Party (SP), senior legislator Sarojini Agarwal quit the party on Friday and announced she is joining the BJP.

An eminent gynaecologist of Meerut, Agarwal also resigned from the Upper House of the state assembly. She is considered close to the Mulayam Singh Yadav-Shivpal Singh camp in the SP.

With the SP for a very long time, Agarwal was a member of the Legislative Council for a second time and her tenure was till January 30, 2021.

Late last month, three senior SP MLCs had quit the party.

After her resignation, Agarwal said she was very upset with the way the party was treating its founder Mulayam Singh Yadav and had no reason to continue despite over three years of her tenure left.

She also announced that she was joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Agarwal's resignation and that of the three MLCs is likely to help in the entry of five Uttar Pradesh ministers, including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, Mohsin Raza and Swatantra Dev Singh into the House within the stipulated six month time.

The Opposition has alleged that the BJP was engineering these resignations to ensure that its Chief Minister and others enter the House through the back gate as they did not have the guts to contest direct elections.

--IANS

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