Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Tuesday expelled Imran Masood, a prominent Muslim leader of Western Uttar Pradesh, from the party for alleged anti-party activities and indiscipline, reports The Indian Express.
Reportedly, the party leadership was upset with some of his statements in the media praising top leaders of the Congress. He was not invited to the previous meeting of the UP state unit held last week in Lucknow because of the praise of Congress leaders.
In a statement, BSP Saharanpur district unit president Janeshwar Prasad said Masood, a former independent MLA, was warned on several occasions not to indulge in “anti-party activities and indiscipline”. However, Masood had not mended his ways, and therefore he was expelled.
Masood later questioned the district unit’s authority to expel him and told reporters in Saharanpur, “I was included in the party by the BSP supremo (Mayawati). How can the district unit president expel me?”
Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in January last year, Masood ended his association with Congress and had joined the Samajwadi Party. He then defected to the BSP in October 2022. As soon as he joined the BSP, Mayawati had announced his appointment as party coordinator for the Western UP region unit and was asked to work among Muslims in Uttarakhand.
Imran, nephew of former union minister late Rasheed Masood, was elected MLA from Muzaffarabad seat (Behat seat after delimitation) in Saharanpur district in 2007 state elections. He had also contested the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections on a Congress ticket from Saharanpur. He lost both the elections to BJP and BSP respectively.
Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, a video clip had surfaced, in which Masood was seen threatening Narendra Modi, then Prime Minister candidate for the BJP, as he blamed the BJP and the RSS for the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
In March 2014, he was arrested on charges of hate speech after he threatened to “chop” Narendra Modi, who was the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, “into pieces”. Masood, a Congress candidate from Saharanpur, had made the remarks during an election campaign speech for the Lok Sabha elections that were held in 2014.