After the crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, the turmoil in the Uttar Pradesh BJP is no longer a hidden thing. The one voice that is most vocal against the state’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is that of Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. Every day people from remote districts of Uttar Pradesh are coming to meet Keshav Prasad Maurya at his camp office, which includes MLAs and people from the organization. Maurya is posting their photos on social media every day. Maurya has made a special place for himself in Uttar Pradesh as the leader of the backward classes of the Bharatiya Janata Party. To prove this, he is highlighting the leaders representing the backward classes. This is his USP in front of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. He knows very well that at this time BJP is ready to do anything for the backward votes, especially the non-Yadav OBC votes, which are drifting away from the party. On Tuesday, his photo with an OBC leader of Uttar Pradesh, Subhaspa chief and minister in the state government, Om Prakash Rajbhar, was the center of discussion in the media throughout the day. Before this, his picture with another backward class leader, Nishad Party president and state government minister Sanjay Nishad was also in the news. The question arises whether this OBC angle of Keshav should be considered a coincidence or an experiment in the power struggle going on with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh? Because after the election results, the head of another NDA party Apna Dal (Sonelal) and minister at the Center, Anupriya Patel, is also continuously attacking Yogi. Meanwhile, a letter written by Keshav Prasad Maurya to the Uttar Pradesh government on the issue of reservation is also creating a similar atmosphere, which makes it seem that Keshav Prasad has decided not to miss the opportunity, Chauhan.
1- Why is there a discussion about OBC leaders uniting?
A long time RSS worker, state president Keshav Prasad Maurya has always regretted not being able to become the CM when BJP won the 2017 assembly elections. He has not been hiding it either. The way he has behaved since the first term of CM Yogi Adityanath cannot be called satisfactory in any way.
Recently, it has started looking like a rebellion. After the results, he did not attend the cabinet meetings, he said at least twice that the organization is bigger than the government. In Lucknow, he is continuously hosting MLAs and prominent leaders in his office. The special thing is that among those who come to meet him here, BJP’s OBC allies are coming with more enthusiasm. It was only after the BJP Working Committee meeting that Sanjay Nishad of Nishad Party had expressed his intentions by naming bulldozer as one of the reasons for NDA’s defeat in UP.
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Should it be called a coincidence or an experiment that just like Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal (S) had asked questions related to reservation from the UP government, Keshav Prasad Maurya also wrote a letter asking similar questions about the department of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s ministry. The fact that all the letters related to OBC reservation have been released publicly shows that this is more of an experiment than a coincidence.
2- Non-Yadav OBC politics in Uttar Pradesh
Political analysts and surveyors had predicted that on the basis of the Ram Mandir inauguration and the popularity of the Modi-Yogi duo, the BJP would win the state in the general elections, but this did not happen. There were many reasons behind the defeat of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. However, it was mainly believed that the BJP lost eight percent votes due to the decrease in support from non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits. The data of the CSDS post-election survey shows that the BJP got 61 percent support (loss of 19 percent) from Kurmi-Koiri, 59 percent support (loss of 13 percent) from non-Yadav OBCs and 29 percent support (loss of 19 percent) from non-Jatav Dalits.
Along with this, the party lost one percent of upper caste votes, two percent of Kurmis and Koiri votes, one percent of Yadavs, three percent of non-Yadav OBC votes, two percent of non-Jatav Dalits and one percent of Muslims. However, it got almost one percent more votes from Jatavs. The reason for SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s lead was that he gave more tickets to BJP’s core voters Kurmis and Kushwahas. The problem for BJP is that if Keshav Prasad Maurya gets angry, then the party is not going to get votes from these sections even in the upcoming elections. The party has once suffered the consequences of angering OBC leader former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh in such a way that it took 2 decades for the party to rise in UP.
3- Will the CM of UP be an OBC before 2027?
There is no doubt that Yogi Adityanath is popular in every section. Yogi Adityanath is the second most popular in the country after PM Narendra Modi. He is also second after PM Modi in terms of campaigning and holding rallies across the country. But the kind of politics that is emerging in Uttar Pradesh after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it cannot be denied that the Bharatiya Janata Party can think of changing the CM in UP. Actually, the issue of Save Constitution has come to the opposition as an Aladdin’s lamp which the BJP is unable to control even if it wants to. Keshav Prasad Maurya is trying to explain to the organization that in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP can save itself from the slogan Save Constitution only by making a person from a backward caste the Chief Minister. The voting that took place in favor of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections seems to indicate that if elections are held today, the BJP will be out of power. The problem for the BJP is that by angering Yogi Adityanath, the party will prove unsuccessful in forming the government in UP.
4- Yogi vs Maurya
The deputy CM has been a long-time BJP loyalist who comes from a non-political, humble background who made his way into the RSS, including the VHP. Like PM Modi, Keshav too had a poor childhood. He claims to have sold tea and newspapers as a child. He participated in the Ram Mandir movement that changed the fortunes of the BJP in UP, he is a one-time MLA and one-time MP from UP, he has held various organisational positions in the state unit, and led the BJP in UP when the party came to power in 2017. Hence many saw him as a natural contender for the CM post at that time.
On the contrary, Uttar Pradesh CM Adityanath is the head of Gorakhnath Math and a five-time MP from Gorakhpur. Yogi is basically a Thakur from Uttarakhand. Along with this, he is popular among every section of the state. Yogi was never a member of BJP. He has been running his own right-wing organization Hindu Yuva Vahini which has no connection with RSS. But it is said that he was made the CM of UP under the pressure of RSS and even today RSS stands behind him like a wall.