Sangeet Som trying to become Yogi Adityanath of west UP

Sangeet Som, the BJP MLA from Sardhana , who seems to have a finger in every communal pie in western UP, right from Muzaffa-rnagar to Dadri to Kairana, is apparently trying to position himself as the Yogi Adityanath of the west.

The involvement of Sangeet Som (a Thakur by caste) in areas outside his constituency in the past three years, amply indicate that the young legislator is desperately trying to position himself as a Hindu hardliner and emerge as a youth icon.

A first time MLA, Mr Som interestingly has his roots in the Samajwadi Party. He joined the party and contested the 2009 Lok Sabha elections on a SP ticket from Muzaffarnagar. He was brought into the BJP by Kalraj Misra. He contested and won his first election on a BJP ticket in the 2012 assembly elections from Sardhana in Meerut.

A year and a half later in 2013, Mr Som jumped into the communal cauldron and addressed a Maha panchayat in Muzaffarnagar that reportedly triggered off riots. He was booked under the NSA and sent to jail, Muzaffarnagar was not a part of his constituency but he still involved himself in the communal politics there.

In Kairana, again, he jumped into the communal cauldron by announcing a Nirbhay Yatra to instil confidence among Hindus. Som’s initiative was resented by the Kairan MP Hukum Singh who had raised the issue and the latter asked Mr Som to cancel his yatra. “He is an upstart who defies the party line to become popular as a Hindu leader. He is trying to emerge as another Yogi Adityanath but he does not realize that Yogi has never worked against party interests,”said a BJP leader in Lucknow. He is doing more harm than good to the party”, said a BJP leader in Lucknow.

The BJP leader, a year later, was again booked in Moradabad for attempting to defy a ban on a Maha panchayat in Kanth area– again a region away from his own constituency. Sangeet Som, again, hit the headlines in 2015 when he reached Dadri after the lynching of Mohd Ikhlaq who was then rumoured to have consumed and stored beef in his house. He warned of a ‘befitting reply’ if innocent persons were framed in the case. A charge sheet was filed against the MLA for making inflammatory statements and violating prohibitory orders in Dadri. In Kairana, again, he jumped into the communal cauldron by announcing a Nirbhay Yatra to instil confidence among Hindus. Som’s initiative was resented by the Kairan MP Hukum Singh who had raised the issue and the latter asked Som to cancel his yatra. “He is an upstart who defies the party line to become popular as a Hindu leader. He is trying to emerge as another Yogi Adityanath but he does not realize that Yogi has never worked against party interests. He is doing more harm than good to the party”, said a BJP leader in Lucknow. Incidentally, Sangeet Som has also caused considerable embarrassment to the BJP when it was revealed that he had co-founded the Al-Dua Food Processing Private Ltd along with Moinuddin Qureshi and Yogesh Rawat and was a director/promoter of the company until 2008, according to government documents.