What's happening in UP? Keshav Maurya meets JP Nadda amid buzz of rift with CM Yogi Adityanath

Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya met Bharatiya Janata Party president JP Nadda on Tuesday – as the party works out its strategy following its poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections – amid his apparent rift with chief minister Yogi Adityanath.

Keshav Prasad Maurya made no comments to the media as he left the BJP headquarters in New Delhi following the meeting. Citing BJP sources, news agency PTI reported that JP Nadda was expected to meet Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, too.

While there was no official word on the agenda of the meetings, Keshav Maurya's meeting with JP Nadda was held following his “organisation is always bigger than government” remarks at the state party's extended executive meeting on Sunday.

Nadda also attended the conclave in which Yogi Adityanath had blamed “over-confidence” for the electoral debacles in Uttar Pradesh and suggested that the BJP could not effectively counter the opposition INDIA bloc's campaign.

There has long been a buzz about less-than-warm relations between Keshav Maurya and Yogi Adityanath. In private conversations, a number of BJP leaders from the state, including those who lost in the Lok Sabha elections, have been critical of the chief minister's working style and cited it as one of the reasons for their loss, PTI reported

In the recently concluded general elections, the INDIA bloc of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress had won 43 of Uttar Pradesh's 80 Lok Sabha seats, while the BJP-led NDA bagged 36. The NDA had won 64 seats in 2019. With bypolls due to 10 assembly seats in the state, political watchers will be keenly awaiting the outcome.

What did Keshav Maurya say?

Addressing a one-day state working committee meeting of the BJP, Maurya, in his first statement after the poll debacle, pointed out 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,” The Print quoted Maurya as saying, in an apparent a dig at Yogi Adityanath and the state bureaucracy that reportedly ignored the public issues raised by BJP workers.

What did Yogi Aditynath say?

Adityanath, at the meeting, claimed that “overconfidence” hurt the BJP's hopes in this year's elections. He also said while the BJP managed to maintain its vote share of previous elections, there was a “shifting of votes”, and now the “defeated” opposition is “jumping around” again.

“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,” he said, in an apparent message to those attacking his government and those who worked against the party during the elections.

Later, speaking at the event, Nadda lauded Adityanath’s work. “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,” the BJP president said.

(With inputs from PTI)