AMN
Former Union Minister and Samajwadi Party leader Beni Prasad Verma passed away in Lucknow on Friday. He was 79.
A Socialist, Verma started his politics in the anti-Congress camp, growing under the peasant politics steered by Charan Singh in UP. He was among the few pre-Emergency Socialist leaders active in current national politics.
Verma was first elected to the Assembly in 1974, under the banner of Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD). Though a term senior to him, Mulayam Singh Yadav was also elected as a BKD member the same year. And thus they became comrades in arms.
Born in a peasant family belonging to the Kurmi community, Verma was a lawyer before he joined politics under the tutelage of Socialist leader Ram Sewak Yadav in Barabanki in the early 1970s. He went on to first serve as a minister in the state government, and then as Union minister in the United Front (1996-1998) and the UPA-II governments.
PM Modi has expressed condolences over the death of Beni Prasad and said his thoughts were with the family and supporters of the deceased leader.