Change CM Yogi who can’t win own seat, says BJP’s Dalit MP

NEW DELHI: Blaming Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for the party losing his own seat from Gorakhpur in the recent bypolls, BJP’s Dalit MP from Robertsganj Chhote Lal Kharwar accused Adityanath of running an “upper-caste government that does not respect the Dalits and backwards”.

Kharwar wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, asking for an FIR to be registered against a local leader who pointed a pistol at him last December and allegedly abused him, but the CM had rebuffed him and asked him to get out of the room when he visited him twice asking for action.

“The FIR has not even been registered after the orders of the National SC/ST Commission. What sort of CM do we have who cannot even win his own seat for the party? He does not listen to a Dalit MP but only listens to his hand-picked officials. He should be changed as CM as he is alienating the Dalits and backwards within the party,” Kharwar told ET.


A senior party official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, accused Kharwar of having a “personal agenda”, pointing out that his brother had been removed as block pramukh following a no-confidence motion, and he wanted that to be reversed.

“In the current environment of Dalit protests, he is only trying to gain political mileage and levelling baseless allegations against the CM,” the BJP functionary told ET.

Kharwar’s outburst comes after another Dalit MP of the party from UP, Sadhvi Savitri Bai Phoole, has criticised her own party on the Supreme Court ruling on the SC/ST Act. Another Dalit MP of the BJP, Udit Raj, has also said that his voice had not been heard by party functionaries on the anger amongst Dalits.