The hunt has begun for the crucial position of the state president of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh, where the party's central leadership already has its eyes focused on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Since UP elects 80 Lok Sabha members, the largest number by some margin sent by any state to Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is relying heavily on his target to capture all the seats to ensure his smooth return to power for the third time. No wonder caste becomes the key criterion for selecting the party chief in this state, where ground politics is deeply rooted in caste.
Deft handling of caste and due representation to even smaller caste groups, particularly the OBCs, helped the BJP win election after election in the country's most populous state. The drift of the OBCs towards the BJP was evident right from the advent of Modi on India's political scene in 2014. In UP, each of the elections subsequent to 2014 was swept by the BJP mainly on the strength of the OBC vote, besides the larger game of Hindu polarisation.
The top BJP leadership believes that the winds of change in favour of the BJP came particularly after a backward party leader, Keshav Prasad Maurya, was inducted as the state party president in 2016. He led the party to an overwhelming victory in the election, but was denied the chief minister's position he had been angling for. Instead, the coveted chair went to Yogi Adityanath (an upper caste Thakur), who managed to bulldoze his way with the help of the RSS even though he had not even contested the state Vidhan Sabha election.
Maurya was, however, given the deputy chief minister's post, while the party leadership made it a point to usher in another OBC leader, Swatantra Dev Singh, as the new state party president.
At the end of the March 2022 state election, Swatantra Dev Singh was inducted into the new Yogi Adityanath cabinet. Meanwhile, even though Keshav Prasad Maurya lost this election, he was still retained as the deputy CM simply because the top BJP leadership wanted to send a clear message to the OBCs that they were the top priority of the party.
When Swatantra Dev Singh was made to resign from the state president's position, speculation was once again rife about Maurya getting the slot. However, it was learnt that Maurya was not ready to abdicate the more coveted position of the deputy CM. He was understood to have made it clear to the party bigwigs that he could accept the party president's position only if it came without him having to step down from deputy chief ministership. But the strong upper caste lobby in the party stood up in arms against his demand, following which the appointment remained in limbo.
This caste tussle has led to a vacuum, and the party has been without a state chief for the past several months. The OBC lobby has been arguing that persistent monopolisation of the state president's slot by upper caste leaders for years failed to get the BJP anywhere in UP.
The fact remains that the party stood nowhere until 2012, when the Samajwadi Party won the election, and Akhilesh Yadav was elected the chief minister. The BJP was then led by Laxmi Kant Bajpai, an upper caste Brahmin, who, despite his simplicity and experience as a minister, could not take the party ahead. He was preceded by a Thakur Surya Pratap Shahi, whose tenure also remained equally lacklustre.
As such, Modi gave the OBCs a push in 2016 by handpicking OBC Keshav Prasad Maurya, whose background did not go beyond that of a lieutenant of former Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) supremo Ashok Singhal. He proved his mettle by turning the scales against the Samajwadi Party in 2017.
Against this backdrop, the party's central leadership emphasised finding an aggressive OBC leader for the prized slot of UP BJP chief. Among the names being considered was a Lodhi leader B Verma who was currently a minister of state in the central government, besides Bhupendra Chaudhary, a Jat leader, now a minister in the UP government.
The structure of the ruling party had already weakened with its organising secretary Sunil Bansal being shifted from UP. Bansal was credited with building the party infrastructure right down to the booth level in Uttar Pradesh, where he had been specially para-dropped by Amit Shah from Rajasthan, where he hails from.
Hence, there was a strong possibility of Keshav Prasad Maurya being persuaded to don the old mantle again. Maurya was called by BJP chief J P Nadda last week, and the two had long closed-door sessions. Soon after his return on Sunday, Maurya's tweet, "organisation is bigger than government," led political observers to believe that he was seen as the best bet for the all-important position of UP state president yet again.
(Sharat Pradhan is a journalist and author based in Lucknow)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.