LUCKNOW: Giving a big jolt to Samajwadi Party (SP) and cementing his image as a perpetual party hopper yet again, SP MLA from Ghosi assembly seat, Dara Sigh Chauhan, resigned from the UP assembly on Saturday. If the sources are to be believed, Chauhan is set to return to BJP and is likely to get a ticket from Ghosi parliamentary constituency in the 2024 general elections.
Chauhan, who was a cabinet minister in the previous Yogi Adityanath government, had switched sides to SP in January 2022 just ahead of UP assembly polls after quitting his membership. In his resignation letter, Chauhan had accused the BJP government of neglecting backward classes, the deprived, Dalits, farmers and unemployed youths. He was among the three prominent Yogi ministers including Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, who had switched over to the SP in mid-January 2022.
A leader belonging to Nonia caste, coming under Most Backward Class (MBC), from eastern UP, Chauhan was elected from the Ghosi seat in Mau district on the SP’s poll symbol in 2022. However, Assembly Speaker Satish Mahana accepted his resignation on Saturday. Chauhan has not cited any reason for his sudden resignation.
Currently, the Ghosi parliament seat is held by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Atul Rai, who is a rape accused and is in jail as an undertrial. Chauhan, as Cabinet minister, held Forests, Environment and Animal Husbandry portfolios in Yogi's cabinet for five years from 2017 to 2022. He resigned from the cabinet on January 12, 2022.
Chauhan, who concentrated in east UP’s Azamgarh and Varanasi divisions, had started his political career from the BSP and was sent to the Rajya Sabha in 1996 as its nominee. He then joined the SP and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2000 as an SP candidate. He also became a member of the SP’s National Executive.
Later, Chauhan returned to the BSP and became Ghosi MP in 2009. He was made leader of the BSP parliamentary party in Lok Sabah. In 2014, he contested from Ghosi as a BSP nominee but lost to the BJP’s Hari Narain Rajbhar. After this, he started sending feelers to the BJP and was expelled from the BSP.
Without losing time, Chauhan switched over to the BJP in 2015. He subsequently impressed top BJP leader Amit Shah by organising a huge rally of backwards in Azamgarh. Shah was the chief guest in that rally. A few days later, Singh was appointed the national president of the BJP’s OBC Morcha.
The BJP fielded Chauhan from the Madhuban constituency in Mau district in the 2017 UP Assembly polls. He won the election comfortably and was inducted as a minister in the Adityanath Cabinet. Considered to be a prominent face of the Nonia Chauhan community, Dara Singh Chauhan is believed to have an impact on around 20 Lok Sabah seats of eastern UP.
