Swami Prasad Maurya

Maurya had jumped from the BJP to the SP before the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election after resigning from his post of cabinet minister. He was made a member of the Legislative Council by the SP in June 2022 and was made the party national general secretary in January last year.

Maurya was a Cabinet minister in the BJP government in the state before he joined the SP. Before moving to BJP, he was a senior leader in the BSP. After he lost Assembly elections on an SP ticket in 2020, he was made a member of the Legislative Council by the party, and subsequently elevated to the post of party’s national general secretary in January last year.

In January 2023, Maurya had kicked off a row after he had said that the Ramcharitmanas is disrespectful towards the Dalits, OBCs and women. He sought the removal of parts of the epic. An FIR was lodged against Maurya at Lucknow’s Hazratganj police station over the remarks.

While this was slammed by the BJP, some within the SP were also unhappy with Maurya’s remarks, saying they were anti-Hindu. Several Brahmin leaders in the SP, including SP MLA Manoj Kumar Pandey, the party’s chief whip in the state Assembly, were unhappy with Maurya’s remarks on religion.

Pandey had said that Maurya’s words are not statements but “bakwaas (nonsense)”. “He only utters such bakwaas. What I don’t understand is why his knowledge regarding all this stayed within him when he was with the BJP between 2017 and 2018. Then, he was sitting in power and reaping its benefits,” said Pandey.

In September last year, Maurya spoke on similar lines saying Hinduism was a religion only for the Brahmins. In November last year, Maurya had questioned “how can Goddess Laxmi be born with four hands?”.

Many within the SP, who feared alienation of the upper castes in UP, had repeatedly questioned why Maurya is allowed by the top leadership of the SP to give such statements