Soon after being elected as a Member of Parliament, senior Dalit leader RK Chaudhary—a former four-time Uttar Pradesh minister and one of the proteges of Kanshiram— triggered a political stir by writing to the Lok Sabha Speaker demanding that the Sengol be removed from Parliament and be replaced with a copy of the constitution.
It comes as little surprise that among the 37 Samajwadi Party MPs elected in the 2024 election, it was Chaudhary (70) who led the march against the Sengol. One of the founding members of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Chaudhary has spent a lifetime entrenched in Ambedkarite politics. He served as a minister in the SP-BSP coalition government under Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1993, the Mayawati governments in 1995 and 1997, and again in the Mulayam Singh government run from 2003 to 2007, even though he was an independent MLA during that period.
Chaudhary parted ways with the BSP in the early 2000s and formed his own party following differences with Mayawati. He, however, returned to BSP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election and contested the Mohanlalganj Lok seat unsuccessfully. He quit the BSP again in 2016 and a year later merged his outfit, Bahujan Samaj Swabhiman Sangarsh Samiti (BS4) with the SP, and after a brief stint away with the Congress, returned to the party full-fledged.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Chaudhary finally tasted victory in the Lok Sabha elections, defeating union minister and fellow-Pasi Dalit leader Kaushal Kishor, after three failed attempts in general elections. Chaudhary had lost the Mohanlalganj Lok Sabha seat in 2009, 2014 and 2019, as a BSP candidate, an independent and a Congress candidate, respectively.