Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya met with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President JP Nadda on Tuesday. This meeting follows after Maurya’s apparent rift with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Following his meeting at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, Maurya did not make any comments to the awaiting media. According to sources within the BJP, as reported by PTI, JP Nadda is also expected to meet with Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary.
While no official details of the meeting’s agenda were disclosed, Maurya’s meeting with Nadda follows his remarks at the state party’s extended executive meeting on Sunday, where he emphasized that “the organisation is always bigger than government.”
Nadda also attended this conclave, where Yogi Adityanath attributed the party’s electoral setbacks to “over-confidence” and highlighted the BJP’s inability to effectively counter the opposition INDIA bloc’s campaign.
There have been persistent reports of tensions between Keshav Maurya and Yogi Adityanath. Some BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh, including those who lost in the Lok Sabha elections, have privately criticized Adityanath’s leadership style, citing it as a factor in their defeat.
In the recent general elections, the INDIA bloc, comprising the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, secured 43 out of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, while the BJP-led NDA managed to win 36 seats. This was a significant decline from the 64 seats the NDA had won in 2019. With bypolls for 10 assembly seats in the state on the horizon, political analysts are keenly observing the unfolding developments.
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Keshav Maurya’s Statements
During the BJP’s one-day state working committee meeting, Maurya made his first public remarks following the electoral losses. He stressed that “the party organisation is bigger than the government and nobody is bigger than the organisation.”
“Every BJP worker is our prestige. I am a BJP worker first and deputy chief minister later and my door always remained open for everybody,” Maurya said, as reported by The Print. This was perceived as a veiled critique of Yogi Adityanath and the state bureaucracy, which allegedly neglected issues raised by BJP workers.
Yogi Adityanath’s Perspective
At the same meeting, Adityanath acknowledged that “overconfidence” had impacted the BJP’s performance in the elections. He noted that while the BJP maintained its previous vote share, there was a “shifting of votes,” allowing the opposition to gain ground.
“The percentage of votes that BJP had in its favour in 2014 and subsequent elections, the BJP has been successful in getting the same number of votes in 2024 as well, but shifting of votes and overconfidence have hurt our hopes,” Adityanath stated, implying a need for introspection within the party.
Nadda’s Endorsement of Adityanath’s Work
Speaking at the event, JP Nadda praised Adityanath’s governance, particularly in improving law and order in Uttar Pradesh. “There was a time when people were leaving Uttar Pradesh for other states due to law and order issues. Today, mafia raj (rule) is over. In the last 10 years, Uttar Pradesh has progressed a lot. The state’s economy is at second position in the country,” Nadda said.