Naseemuddin Siddiqui, son expelled from BSP

The Bahujan Samaj Party on Wednesday expelled its Muslim face, Naseemudin Siddiqui, and his son from the party for carrying out “anti-party” activities.

Siddiqui, who hails from Banda, was earlier removed as the party in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and was appointed as the MP unit in-charge after the assembly poll debacle.

“Siddiqui and his son Afzal have been expelled from the party. He has a partnership in a number of slaughter houses and ‘benami’ properties in his name. He also took money during assembly polls due to which party had to suffer defeat,” said BSP General Secretary and Rajya Sabha member Satish Chandra Mishra.

He also alleged that Nasimuddin used to “accept money” from people in return for work and added that the “BSP will not tolerate such indiscipline”.

BSP supremo Mayawati had carried out a major organisational rejig after the assembly polls, and launched her brother Anand Kumar in active politics making him the party’s vice-president.

With a view to revamp her party, Mayawati had also dissolved the existing team of zonal, divisional and district coordinators and brotherhood committees set up to woo different castes and communities like Brahmins, Thakur and Muslims.

After the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in which BSP failed to open its account, the BSP again suffered a humiliating defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections where the party had managed to secure only 19 seats out of the total 403 seats.

Mayawati had blamed electronic voting machines for her party’s poor performance.

On the Aam Aadmi Party’s demonstration on EVMs in the Delhi assembly on Tuesday, Mishra said, “BSP was the first to raise the issue of misuse of EVMs”.