Lucknow, May 11: Uttar Pradesh's ruling BJP has expelled 87 party leaders and workers for six years for "anti-party activities", a leader said on Thursday.

 State General Secretary Vidya Sagar Sonkar said the action was taken following a probe by the disciplinary committee of the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
 
 The expelled leaders and workers had either contested against the BJP candidates in assembly elections or backed the opposition, he added. 
 
 The expulsion was cleared by state President Keshav Prasad Maurya.
 
 Prominent among those sacked are Kapil Dev Kori (Rampur), V.K. Saini (Moradabad), Inderdev Singh (Bijnore), Shanti Swaroop Sharma (Bulandshahr), Chandra Shekhar Rawat (Hathras), Ashish Vashishtha (Baghpat) and Pratibha Singh, Mahesh Narayan Tiwari, Nirmal Srivastava, Vaibhav Pandey and Vidyabhushan Dwivedi from Gonda.