Lucknow, Jul 24 (IANS): Continuing its OBC outreach in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP will on Monday welcome a host of backward caste leaders from the opposition camp.

Uttar Pradesh Minister and the state's BJP OBC Morcha president, Narendra Kashyap said that a senior SP and a RLD leader were joining the BJP.

Both of them happen to be Saini, the electorally significant community in the state's western region. One of them had even contested the 2022 Assembly elections on an RLD ticket from Muzaffarnagar but lost.

Political circles are also abuzz about BJP making a big strike in the opposition camp in Jaunpur, from where it could not win the Lok Sabha seat in 2019.

Sources said that a former BSP MLA from a seat in Jaunpur is in constant touch with the saffron leadership.

A former woman MLA joined the SP in 2022 and contested the Assembly elections but lost. She is considered as a prominent Kurmi face in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Likewise, another SP leader from Dalit community is also learnt to be in touch with the BJP high command. He has been a SP MLA from an Assembly seat in Jaunpur.

He was an SP MLA in 2017 but was denied a ticket by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav in 2022, in what is learnt to have left him upset with the party dispensation.

Kashyap said that the people’s faith in the BJP has grown remarkably under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

He said that the various welfare schemes of the BJP were aimed for the welfare of the backward classes and other oppressed sections of the society.

“The electoral base of the opposition was consistently shrinking. This has unsettled the opposition,” he said.

A week ago when SP MLA Dara Singh Chauhan had returned to the BJP.

Chauhan, who resigned from the state Assembly, is in contention for a cabinet berth in the Yogi government.

Likewise, SP’s former ally SBSP, led by Om Prakash Rajbhar, too left the Akhilesh camp to return to BJP NDA.