Lucknow, July 3: Uttar Pradesh minister Om Prakash Rajbhar, head of ruling ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, appears to have pressured Yogi Adityanath into agreeing to transfer the Ghazipur district magistrate by threatening resignation and a dharna before the collectorate tomorrow.

The backward caste welfare minister today announced after an hour's meeting with Adityanath that he had called off his protest as "the chief minister has accepted all my demands".

No official announcement, however, had been made by this evening about the purported transfer of Sanjay Kumar Khatri, who had got police to book the minister's brother and an aide on charges of beating up government officials.

Om Prakash, an Other Backward Classes leader, had yesterday threatened to quit the government if Khatri wasn't transferred from Ghazipur, 350km east of Lucknow.

The minister had been bristling at the government since Narijan Rajbhar, a villager from Manirampur in Ghazipur, attended Adityanath's janata darbar last month and handed over a land-grab complaint against the Suheldev Party district chief, Ramji Rajbhar. The chief minister then asked the chakbandi (mutation) department to solve the dispute.

Government sources said that Ramji and Rajnet Rajbhar, brother of the minister, beat up three officials when they arrived at the spot on June 17 to probe the matter. Khatri then asked the police to register cases against the two men.

The sources said that Adityanath had summoned Khatri in the minister's presence today and asked him to "obey the orders of (Om Prakash) Rajbhar" and "withdraw the cases against the (Suheldev Party) members".

"But our problem is that Manoj Sinha, Ghazipur MP and Union minister of state for railways, is supporting the district magistrate whereas Om Prakash wants him out," an official said on the condition of anonymity.

"We have learnt that Sinha was against an alliance with the Suheldev Party for the February-March Assembly elections, but Shah overruled him."

Om Prakash had yesterday threatened to boycott tomorrow's cabinet meeting and meet BJP president Amit Shah to complain against "the insensitivity of the chief minister and the district magistrate towards the issues of the people raised by me".

"The district magistrate is a bully. Either I stay a minister or he stays in Ghazipur," he had declared.

"The district magistrate doesn't listen to me, how will he give justice to the masses? I had asked him to remove encroachments from a road but he is patronising the affluent encroachers. Instead of acting against them, he asked the police to book my party leaders."

Today, the minister told reporters: "I placed 19 demands before the chief minister, including the transfer of the district magistrate. I have cancelled my dharna because Yogiji has agreed."