Two days after Apna Dal leader Anupriya Patel was sworn in as Minister of State in the Union Council of Ministers, a faction of the Apna Dal on Thursday said it was "severing" ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Claiming to be heading the "real" Apna Dal, its president Krishna Patel and her other daughter Pallavi Patel said their party was snapping all ties with the BJP and vowed to "teach them a lesson".
After a party meeting in the state capital, Krishna Patel said she will organise a rally in Varanasi on August 23 to showcase her support base.
This rally, she claimed, will be much bigger than those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in the past.
However, the Apna Dal faction led by Krishna's younger daughter Anupriya Patel, the MP from Mirzapur, on Thursday said it will now work to strengthen the BJP and ensure their alliance storms to power in Uttar Pradesh in the 2017 assembly elections.
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R.K. Verma, a party legislator, said the Other Backward Castes were indebted to Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for making Anupriya Patel a union minister.
--IANS
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