The Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are turning into a real potboiler. The Samajwadi Party has been delivered a huge blow after Akhilesh Yadav’s sister-in-law Aparna Yadav joined the BJP today.
Aparna Yadav is the wife of Akhilesh Yadav’s brother and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger son Prateek Yadav.
On joining the BJP in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh, Aparna said, “I am very thankful to BJP. The nation always comes first for me. I admire PM Modi’s work.”
Aparna Yadav tied the knot with Prateek Yadav, son of Mulayam Singh’s second wife Sadhana Gupta, in 2011 and the two have a daughter together.
Aparna, who is the daughter of journalist Arvind Singh Bisht, grew up hobnobbing with political bigwigs — including Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was friends with her father — in Lucknow.
Aparna studied study political science, modern history and English for her bachelor’s degree, and did her post-graduation in international relations at the University of Manchester.
It was during her time in England that her relationship with Prateek, who was doing his master’s in management at Leeds University, grew.
In 2017, Aparna contested from Lucknow Cantonment Assembly seat and lost to BJP’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi.
A look at Aparna’s social media feed shows that she is no traditional bahu and is quite an adventurist.
Her feed shows photographs of her performing at music concerts (she was trained in Indian classical music at the Bhatkhande Music Institute in Lucknow), sky diving, playing with pugs and even enjoying an ice cream on the streets of Hazratganj like any other Lucknow resident.
Aparna first made waves in the political circles when she clicked a selfie with Prime Minister Narenda Modi at a family wedding and later met Home Minister Rajnath Singh and touched his feet.
Her stands in some cases have been pro-BJP ideologically. For instance, she expressed her support to the National Register of Citizens contrary to the stand of the Samajwadi Party. She had also supported the abrogation of Article 370.
In a Hindustan Times report, she was quoted as saying, “I have my own voice, my own opinion, and that will always remain so. But I can also convince people with my ‘feminine energy’. You don’t have to be like Mayawati to survive in UP politics.”
In 2021, she also contributed Rs 11 lakh to the Ram Temple fund and refused to ‘take responsibility for her family’s past actions’.
Speaking about firing on karsevaks in 1990 when her father-in-law was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the recent statement of her brother-in-law Akhilesh Yadav, who called the donation collectors for Ram Temple fund as ‘chanda-jeevis’, Aparna Yadav said, “I don’t want to comment on what happened during Netaji’s (Mulayam Singh Yadav) tenure, but past never equals to the future. We are present and future.”
“I contributed from my own free will. I can’t take responsibility for my family’s actions. I believe that our coming generations should be Ram devotees.”
Aparna is also known to have stood up to her father-in-law Mulayam Singh Yadav on his sexist rhetoric.
She had said then, “Women need to stop thinking that it’s their fault. We need to question the boys and not the girls.” (FIRST POST)
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Interesting development and nay it continue