Switching Sides: Dara joins league of turncoats who tasted defeat after switchover

LUCKNOW: With his loss in the Ghosi bypoll on Friday, BJP candidate Dara Singh Chauhan joined the league of nearly a dozen turncoats who lost their seats after switching sides during the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
Chauhan was one of the three prominent UP ministers who had rebelled against BJP to join Samajwadi Party – the other two being Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini – ahead of last year’s UP elections.
Besides Maurya and Saini, six more BJP MLAs – Bhagwati Sagar (Ghatampur), Brajesh Prajapati (Tindwari), Jai Chaubey (Khalilabad), Madhuri Verma (Nanpara), Roshan Lal Verma (Tilhar) and Radha Krishna Sharma (Aonla) – lost elections after switching over to SP. Likewise, BJP MLA Avtar Singh Bhadana, who left the party to join RLD, lost from Jewar. The same was true for Congress’ Naresh Saini (Behat) and SP’s Hari Om Yadav (Sirsaganj), who lost their seats after switching to BJP.
Experts said BJP’s loss was primarily rooted in the image of Chauhan, who happened to be a known party-hopper. Chauhan, who started his career with BSP in 1996, joined SP from BJP just before the 2022 polls and won from Ghosi. In July this year, he quit his Ghosi seat and SP to join BJP – a move that necessitated a bypoll. A Nonia OBC, Chauhan was this time up against SP’s Sudhakar Singh, a Thakur.
Chauhan’s defeat was seen as a significant setback to BJP-led NDA, which was challenged by SP, a key constituent of the INDIA bloc, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Experts said the defeat was much more profound as BJP had pressed a battery of UP ministers to campaign for Chauhan.