Don’t treat me as an outsider, Naresh tells BJP leaders

HARDOI: Seven months after he quit the Samajwadi Party to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), former Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Aggarwal on Sunday urged local BJP leaders not to treat him as an outsider.

The ‘appeal’ came from a stage where party’s general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal was also present.

“Humko paraya mat samjho. Hum kuch lene nahi, kuchh dene aaiye hain. (don’t treat me as an outsider, I have not come to take anything but to give something back),” Aggarwal said.

The two MPs from Hardoi – Anshul Verma and Anju Bala – were tightlipped over Aggarwal’s remark.

In June, chief minister Yogi Adityanath on a visit to the district had travelled with Aggarwal’s bete noire Ashok Bajpai, a Rajya Sabha MP from BJP, who too had defected from the SP.

“Aggarwal had felt left out then but the situation seems to be changing,” a local BJP leader said.

Interestingly, Bajpai was conspicuous by his absence from Aggarwal’s Sunday show.

The buzz is that his son Nitin is also in contention for a ministerial berth in the Yogi government, the expansion of which is long overdue.

“By getting Bansal, a key aide of BJP chief Amit Shah, in Hardoi, Aggarwal indicated that the clout he used to wield here when he was with the Samajwadi Party was back again,” a political observer from the district commented.

Aggarwal himself admitted that for four decades people of Hardoi have been calling him ‘Hardoi ka laal’ (the loved one from Hardoi).

“I am 70 years of age now. I don’t have any ambitions. I left the Samajwadi Party as it had started catering to industrialists and Bollywood,” he said.

Aggarwal’s entry into the BJP had become controversial when senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj had disapproved of his remarks against Jaya Bachchan, who had got SP’s Rajya Sabha ticket ahead of him.

BJP’s Hardoi chief Sri Krishna Shastri whom Aggarwal had singled out while saying ‘humko paraya na samjho’ immediately offered a clarification.

“Nareshji you were never an outsider even earlier and now more so since you are with the BJP,” Shastri said.