Three Samajwadi Party legislators who had broken ranks with their organisation formalised their entry into the BJP at a gathering held in Amethi on Wednesday — a development that came roughly two years ahead of the next Uttar Pradesh Assembly election cycle — while party members at the event directed remarks toward both the Congress and the SP over what they characterised as reliance on dynastic structures and caste-based electoral strategies.

The three legislators — Rakesh Pratap Singh, representing Gauriganj, Abhay Singh from the Gosaiganj constituency, and Vinod Chaturvedi from Kalpi — were enrolled into BJP ranks during a membership drive held at Gauriganj, where Union Minister and state party president Pankaj Chaudhary and national general secretary Smriti Irani were both present.

The party exits are unfolding against a backdrop of electoral rivalry in Amethi, a constituency long associated with Congress where Irani unseated Rahul Gandhi — who was serving as Congress president at the time — during the 2019 Lok Sabha contest. In 2024, that seat passed to Kishori Lal Sharma, a Congress candidate who had maintained close ties with the Gandhi family over many years.

Speaking at the event, Irani contended that the Congress party had fostered conditions of disorder through its actions against the Election Commission and what she described as moves to weaken democratic institutions. Irani put forward the view that the party was grooming a preferred dynastic figure for unchecked authority, and that assembling an alliance of opposition groups would not be sufficient to secure a win at the polls, while also noting that the Gandhi family had opted to rely on Samajwadi Party support in Amethi rather than contesting the seat independently.

A BJP spokesperson put forward the position that its membership stood ready to push back against what the party characterised as moves to undermine democratic institutions, and further contended that Congress had been using the Election Commission to serve its own political interests. Those remarks came against the backdrop of nine consecutive state-level defeats for Congress in Uttar Pradesh, a region where the party has not held power since 1989.

Chaudhary put forward the claim that the BJP would take power in Uttar Pradesh for a third straight term following the 2027 Assembly elections. He put forward the view that the country belonged to all its people rather than to any single person or family, and added that politics rooted in caste identity and hereditary succession appeared to be losing ground. Chaudhary stated that the three MLAs opted for the BJP after finding their room to operate within their former party too narrow for their purposes.

Remarks delivered by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during his time overseas were characterised by the speaker as harmful to India's standing in the world. Funding and resources held by the state administration were pledged to support ongoing development work in both Amethi and Rae Bareli.

Amar Pal Maurya — who heads the BJP's OBC Morcha at the national level and holds a seat in parliament — contended that the Samajwadi Party under Akhilesh Yadav had moved away from the socialist ideals associated with Ram Manohar Lohia and Mulayam Singh Yadav, arguing that the party's focus had shifted toward serving a single family's interests rather than those of the wider population.

Disagreements with the SP, along with backing for the BJP's development platform, were put forward by the three leaders as the basis for their decision to change political affiliations. Rakesh Pratap Singh stated that his decision to join the BJP was framed as a bid to deliver the Gauriganj Assembly seat to the party — a constituency he described as having returned him to the legislature three times running under an SP banner.

Across three successive electoral contests — held in 2012, 2017, and 2022 — the seat remained in his hands, with the most recent of those races producing a winning margin of 6,963 votes against BJP candidate Chandra Prakash Mishra, commonly known as Matiyari. A vote cast by him in favour of the BJP candidate during the 2024 Rajya Sabha elections deepened the rift between him and the SP leadership. Both he and Abhay Singh were removed from party membership in June 2025, after which neither held any formal legislative affiliation.

Abhay Singh attributed his exit from the SP to two interconnected factors: the dispute surrounding the Ramcharitmanas and what he viewed as the party's unwillingness to push back against what he characterised as a slight against Lord Ram. Pledging to campaign in the 2027 Assembly elections, he expressed confidence that the SP nominee would face a substantial defeat.

Pointing to infrastructure projects carried out across Bundelkhand under both central and state leadership, Chaturvedi also took a position against what he characterised as the SP's reliance on caste as a political organising principle.

Attendance at the event was substantial, and the occasion carried added significance for Rakesh Pratap Singh's political standing. Among those present were state ministers Daya Shankar Singh, Krishna Paswan, Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh, Dara Singh Chauhan, and Dinesh Singh, alongside former Union minister Sanjeev Balyan and a number of other BJP figures.