Integral to BSP’s Brahmin outreach, Nakul Dubey thanks Mayawati for ‘setting him free’
He was a vital part of the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) outreach to Brahmins in the run-up to this year’s Uttar Pradesh elections. But, former Cabinet minister Nakul Dubey found himself expelled from the party on Saturday.
The 56-year-old leader is a close confidant of the BSP’s Brahmin face and Mayawati’s trusted lieutenant Satish Chandra Misra and accompanied him to public meetings across Uttar Pradesh last year to develop “bhaichara (brotherhood)” between Brahmins and Dalits ahead of the state polls. He was assigned the task of taking care of “Brahmin bhaichara committees”.
But the BSP failed to recreate the winning strategy of the 2007 election and faced an electoral debacle. It managed to win only one constituency (Rasra in Ballia district) and its vote share plummeted from 22.23 per cent in 2017 to 12.88 per cent.
On Saturday evening, Mayawati announced Dubey’s expulsion on charges of indiscipline and “anti-party activities”. Ruling out joining another party, the former minister told The Indian Express on Sunday, “I am thankful to Behenji (Mayawati) for setting me free. I have called my supporters from across the state. I will form an organisation to work at the state level for sarva samaj (the entire society), including Brahmins.”
Dubey, who is a lawyer by profession, said he was unaware of the “indiscipline” he is accused of. “My actions have not been anti-party,” he added.
The former Cabinet minister was active in student politics during his college days in Lucknow. He joined the BSP in 2002 and two years later he was assigned the responsibility of supervising the party’s affairs in the Unnao Lok Sabha constituency where the BSP candidate was Brajesh Pathak, the current deputy chief minister. Sources close to the former minister said he had played an active role in getting Pathak the election ticket.
Dubey was the main organiser of a rally in Lucknow on June 9, 2005, at which Mayawati coined the “Haathi nahi Ganesh hai; Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hai (Not an elephant, it is Ganesh; it is Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh)” slogan to signal that the party was keen to win over Brahmin voters. The elephant is the BSP’s symbol.
Impressed with the work Dubey did in the Brahmin community before the 2007 Assembly elections, Mayawati fielded him from Mahona in Lucknow district. Dubey scraped through his debut election by a narrow margin of 2,177 votes. With the BSP winning an absolute majority, Dubey found himself in charge of the important Urban Development
portfolio.
Five years later, he lost the state election from the Bakshi Ka Talab seat in Lucknow district by 1,899 votes. His electoral fortunes did not improve as he lost both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Sitapur, and in between failed to bag Bakshi ka Talab in 2017, losing by 17,584 votes.
