Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Sangeeta Azad, who represents the Lalganj seat in East Uttar Pradesh, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi on Monday evening.
Sangeeta joined the BJP in the presence of its national general secretary Vinod Tawde, deputy CM Brajesh Pathak and U.P. BJP chief Bhupendra Singh.
Sangeeta joined the Hindutva camp along with her husband, former MLA Azad Ari Mardan and BSP spokesperson Seema Kushwaha, the lawyer of Nirbhaya and the Hathras rape victim.
In 2019, Sangeeta had won the SC reserved Lalganj Lok Sabha seat, defeating then sitting MP Neelam Sonkar of the BJP by around 1.5 lakh votes.
The BSP had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election in alliance with the SP and won 10 seats. These included Ghazipur, Ghosi, Lalganj, Jaunpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Shravasti seats in East UP and Saharanpur, Nagina, Bijnor, Amroha in West UP.
Sangeeta is the fourth sitting BSP MP to leave the party in the past few months.
Of these, sitting Ambedkar Nagar MP Ritesh Pandey joined the BJP last month and will contest on a BJP ticket from the same seat this time.
Afzal Ansari, the BSP’s sitting Ghazipur MP joined the SP last month, which is fielding him from Ghazipur.
Amroha MP Danish Ali was suspended from BSP in December after he had spoken in favour of TMC MP Mahua Moitra in the cash-for-query case, and joined Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the latter’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. Congress is likely to field him from Amroha as part of its alliance with the SP.
 MP Sangeeta Azad, who represents the Lalganj seat in East Uttar Pradesh, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi on Monday evening.){kind=link}