LUCKNOW: In another jolt to Congress in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, former Fatehpur MP and UPCC general secretary Rakesh Sachan joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), along with former minister and four-time MLA Shivakant Ojha of Samajwadi Party and SP's Jalalabad legislator Sharadvir Singh.
The three took the membership of the saffron party in the presence of Union minister and the BJP's UP in charge Dharmendra Pradhan and former UP BJP chief Laxmikant Bajpai.
Sachan, who was also a member of Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi's advisory committee, had joined the party after quitting SP just before 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He was fielded by the Congress from Fatehpur but lost to BJPs's Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
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He was considered quite close to SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav who won the 2009 Lok Sabha election from Fathepur. He was earlier an MLA in 1993 and 2002 on an SP ticket. Sources say that he or his wife Seema Sachan might be fielded from either Bhoginipur in Kanpur Dehat or Bindki in Fatehpur.
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Ojha, who has come back to BJP, has served as a minister in both Kalyan Singh and Akhilesh Yadav's cabinet on multiple occasions. He has been an MLA from Raniganj in Pratapgarh district four times till 2012, but lost in 2017. He also had a stint in BSP when he contested the Lok Sabha poll from Pratapgarh, but lost. This time, he was denied a ticket by SP, which fielded Vinod Dubey from his traditional seat.
Sharadvir Singh, the present MLA from Jalalabad in Shahjahanpur has won the seat twice in the past on the SP ticket. His father Udaivir Singh had won the seat twice as a Congress member. However, SP, this time fielded his arch-rival Neeraj Kushwaha, who has defected from BSP. This prompted him to quit the party after nearly 30-year association.
