Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader, and Lok Sabha member from Bijnor, Malook Nagar on Saturday demanded a separate West U.P. State, adding it was the need of the hour and necessary for the development of the region.
“In the future, Western U.P. will become a separate State; it is the need of the hour as the people of the region suffer much difficulties. Whenever needed, I will raise the issue,” he told reporters in Muzaffarnagar, when asked about Union Minister Sanjeev Baliyan’s push for the cause.
Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan, had recently at the International Jat Parliament held in Meerut, said that Western U.P. should become a separate State and that Meerut should become its capital, leading to an uproar within his own party. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) disagreed with the demand with a former BJP MLA going as far as to say if this were to happen the new State would become a “mini-Pakistan”.
Mr. Nagar added that it was the BSP which passed the proposal to divide Uttar Pradesh into four parts. In 2011, the Mayawati-led BSP government passed the proposal for division of the State into Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Awadh Pradesh and Paschim Pradesh by voice vote amid unprecedented pandemonium in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. The issue of separate State failed to make any headway in the last one decade.
