‘BJP, Nishad Party are natural allies cemented by shared Hindutva’

Out of 403, 160 seats are Nishad-dominated, where we have the responsibility to ensure NDA victory, says Sanjay Nishad, MLC from U.P.

Self-anointed “political godfather of fishermen” community, Sanjay Nishad is an MLC in Uttar Pradesh and president of the Nirbal Indian Soshit Hamara Apna Dal (known as the Nishad Party), which claims to rally together the numerically significant riverine most-backward communities. In 2018, the Nishad Party collaborated with the SP and the BSP to defeat the BJP in two key seats — Gorakhpur and Phulpur — in the Lok Sabha byelections. A year later, the party announced an alliance with the two parties but three days later Mr. Nishad dumped them and switched over to the BJP, also abandoning the ‘85 vs 15’ (Bahujan vs Upper Castes) narrative, claiming that his caste icon Nishadraj and Lord Ram had a ‘natural alliance.’ In other words, the BJP and the Nishad Party were natural allies cemented by shared Hindutva. After Om Prakash Rajbhar’s exit from the NDA and recent shift to the SP, Mr. Nishad has acquired significance as his ally BJP tries to preserve its backward caste support base in 2022 polls. Excerpts from an interview in Lucknow:

When there is an arrangement of hearts and where ideologies of two parties match, seats are small matter. Let’s focus on the victory. This is the milan of one sanskriti, to bring back Ram Rajya and make India a ‘sone ki chidiya’ again.