Amit Shah will attend Sonelal Patel’s birth anniversary celebration in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) alliances in Uttar Pradesh are fighting for the OBC votes ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The celebrations of Sonelal Patel’s birth anniversary today (July 2) have also heightened the family feud.
Both the Apna Dal (Sonelal), which is affiliated with the BJP, and the Apna Dal (Kamerawadi), which is affiliated with the SP, have planned different displays of strength by inviting prominent figures to events in Lucknow to mark the anniversary.
Sonelal Patel’s two daughters have been at odds for a very long time. While her estranged sister Pallavi Patel is an SP MLA, Anupriya Patel serves as a Union Minister in the BJP-led coalition. The husband of Anupriya Patel and head of the Apna Dal (S), Ashish Patel, announced that Union Home Minister Amit Shah would be the prominent guest at his party’s event in Lucknow.
He stated that other speakers at the event include Uttar Pradesh Minister Sanjay Nishad, Nishad Party President Yogi Adityanath, Union Minister Ramdas Athawale, former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, and Apna Dal (S) President Anupriya Patel.
The influence of the party Apna Dal (S) among the Kurmi people in the state is what makes it so well-known.
Who will all be present at the event:
He said that prominent BJP and Apna Dal (S) officials as well as Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, State BJP President Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, and others would attend the event at the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan.
Akhilesh Yadav, the leader of SP, and Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, have been invited to an event hosted by Sonelal Patel’s wife’s party, Apna Dal (Kamerawadi), which she leads.
Senior SP-Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) leaders would attend the event the party is hosting, according to Pankaj Niranjan, general secretary of Apna Dal (K).
The Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Lucknow served as the primary location for both sides’ activities. Ashish Patel, the head of Apna Dal (S), said that his group had reserved the space in advance. In an effort to grab the spotlight, he said Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) announced their event at the same location. The opposition side announced a demonstration to disrupt “our programme” when the administration at the same location denied permission, he added.
According to Niranjan, the governing coalition used “pressure” in order to deny his party the site, therefore the event will now be held at the SP auditorium.
We have chosen to address the caste census and other OBC-related concerns in the curriculum, he said.
Since the Apna Dal is a Kurmi-centric party and supports the two political groupings, the BJP and SP are eager to maintain the two Apna Dal divisions under their control.
Learn more about Apna Dal’s past:
Sonelal Patel established the Apna Dal in 1995. Sonelal Patel, who was born on July 2, 1950, in Bagulihai hamlet in the Kannauj district, was a close friend of BSP founder Kanshi Ram. In 2009, he was killed in a car accident.
As Anupriya Patel, the Apna Dal’s then national general secretary, was fired, divisions inside the organisation were made public for the first time in October 2014. The two Apna Dal sections afterwards joined forces with opposing organisations headed by the BJP and the Samajwadi Party.
Anupriya Patel is one of the two MPs and 13 MLAs for the Apna Dal (Sonelal). The Uttar Pradesh BJP-led administration includes her husband Ashish Patel in its cabinet of ministers.
Her mother Krishna Patel and older sister Pallavi Patel are the leaders of the opposing group. In the 2022 elections, Pallavi Patel, running as an SP candidate, defeated Keshav Prasad Maurya, the deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, in the Sirathu assembly seat.
