Will talk to Shah before deciding next course of action: Rajbhar

Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) leader and Uttar Pradesh minister Om Prakash Rajbhar has said he will have a detailed discussion with BJP president Amit Shah and then decide on his party's next course of action.

"The BJP president is arriving here on April 10. I will be holding discussions with him on the prevailing conditions in the state, in the presence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath," he told reporters on the sidelines of a programme here last night.

"I will tell you what the BJP wants and what Om Prakash Rajbhar wants after April 10," Rajbhar, whose party is a constituent in the ruling NDA coalition, said.

"If he (Shah) does not agree on the issues raised by us, as he had promised (during a meeting in Delhi between the two leaders ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls), we will have to re-think about the alliance," he said, replying to a question.

The Adityanath government was left red-faced when Rajbhar had said corruption had increased in Uttar Pradesh under the present dispensation and that his party was not getting the due respect from the coalition partner.

He had also threatened to boycott voting in the biennial Rajya Sabha polls.

Subsequently, Rajbhar was called to Delhi for a meeting with Shah, after which the SBSP leader had announced that his party MLAs would vote for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election.

Rajbhar also claimed that Adityanath was going by what he was being told by officials, who were out to defame the government on issues of corruption.

"Now their (BJP's) own MPs and MLAs are speaking against them and sitting on dharna...look at the statements that are coming from people occupying responsible positions...there has to be something for them to speak like this," he said.

The SBSP leader was also critical of the BJP's decision not to select the chief minister from among the 325 NDA MLAs in the state and said "it appears that all of them were useless...the leader should have been selected from among them".