Two days before the second phase of polling in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the Rashtriya Lok Dal candidate from Nakur assembly constituency decided that he wants to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party.
According to a report in theHindustan Times, Ramkumar Kashyap attended BJP chief Amit Shah's rally on 13 February and announced that he would not be contesting the elections as an RLD candidate but as a BJP party worker. And since it is too late to withdraw his nomination, he is technically campaigning against himself.
In a rather dramatic move, he and his supporters went and pledged allegiance to Amit Shah and asked people to vote for the lotus instead of the RLD symbol, the hand pump, reported the Economic Times.
Kashyap alleged that he had been insulted by the leaders of RLD. Unable to bear their jibes, he had decided to switch over and help BJP win the elections.
The BJP candidate from Nakur, Dharam Singh Saini, was obviously very pleased. He said Kashyap had made the right move since RLD did not know how to respect its own people and that the BJP welcomes him with open arms.
Many RLD leaders demanded that Kashyap be punished for this 'act', while RLD's Western UP president, Munshi Rampal, said that he had ruined his own political career for personal gains.
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