Raja Bhaiya to Vote for BJP’s RS Candidate in Kaushambi: How Meet With Yogi’s OSD, UP BJP Chief Sealed the Deal – News18

Despite a visit by Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, Raghuraj Pratap Singh, popularly known as ‘Raja Bhaiya’, is set to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate in the Rajya Sabha (RS) elections on Tuesday.

The poll has 11 candidates — eight from the BJP and three from the SP — vying for 10 seats. The BJP’s seven candidates and SP’s two are set to win unopposed. But the BJP has made things difficult for the SP by fielding an eighth candidate. Raja Bhaiya’s party Jansatta Dal (Lok Tantrik) has two votes, including his.

While both Yadav and UP BJP President Bhupendra Chaudhary met Raja Bhaiya, Chaudhary was also accompanied by Shravan Baghel, the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

A day before the polls, both SP as well as Adityanath’s office invited Raja Bhaiya for dinner arranged for the MLAs who will be voting for the respective eighth Rajya Sabha candidate.

During negotiations, Bhaiya proposed to back his preferred candidate Shailendra Kumar in Kaushambi Lok Sabha constituency. Sources say both the parties agreed to it, following which he asked for another seat, which wasn’t agreeable to either.

So what proved to be the clincher?

Last year, acting on the direction of the Supreme Court, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team had reached Kunda in Pratapgarh to re-investigate the role of Bhaiya and his four aides in the murder of deputy SP Zia-ul-Haq in 2013. It is believed that it might have played a role in the way he votes on Tuesday, along with his party MLA.

This is not the first snub to the SP from the Kunda strongman.

In the 2018 Rajya Sabha election, despite being on Yadav’s side, Bhaiya did not vote for Bhimrao Ambedkar — the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate whom the SP was backing. Bhaiya instead voted for the BJP Rajya Sabha candidate. It had more to do with a longstanding history, where Bhaiya was sent to prison during Mayawati’s rule.