Rumblings of dissent have started becoming louder in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) over the ouster of Babu Singh Kushwaha from the post of Cabinet minister, following large scale financial bungling in the health and family welfare department.
Babu Singh Kushwaha, who held the family welfare portfolio and Anant Misra who held the health portfolio, were asked to resign from their ministerial posts on April 7 after reports that financial bungling in their departments led to the murder of two chief medical officers.
A number of BSP coordinators who were summon for a meeting with the chief minister on Monday, are “aggrieved” over Mr Kushwaha’s ouster — more so, since the latter is said to be a staunch loyalist of the chief minister.
“Kushwaha’s ouster from the council of ministers is a part of the conspiracy to alienate the chief minister from her loyalists. A section of party leaders and bureaucrats are a part of this conspiracy. Kushwaha was our only link with the party president and his resignation will damage the communication process within the party,” said a BSP coordinator from eastern UP while talking to this correspondent.
Another party coordinator from central UP echoed similar sentiments when he said, “The chief minister is getting increasingly vulnerable to pressures from a particular lobby. Kushwaha knows the party set-up inside out and his ouster will weaken the chief minister as well as the party cadres who largely depended on Kushwaha to get a word in with Ms Mayawati.”
Interestingly, the BSP cadres refuse to believe that Kushwaha was a part of the scam unearthed in his department.
“He (Kushwaha) cannot look beyond ‘Behenji’ (Mayawati) and there is absolutely no question of him acting on his own initiative. Some IAS and IPS officers have deliberately misled the chief minister,” said a BSP minister.
Another section of the party, meanwhile, feels that the ouster of Mr Anant Misra, too, was unwarranted since the latter had nothing to do with bungling in the family welfare department.
“In any case, the involvement of both the ministers has not yet been established. How can you sacrifice your own people to evade media pressure? There is no link yet to establish the two ministers’ involvement in either the financial scam of the murders of the CMOs,” said a senior party functionary.
A party MP, on the other hand, admitted that the resignations of the two ministers would definitely cast a shadow on the party’s prospects in the next Assembly elections.
“The Opposition parties will use this as a tool to put the party in the dock and the issue will also have caste ramifications since the two ministers represent two strong vote banks of the BSP,” the MP explained.