After the crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, the stir in Uttar Pradesh BJP is no longer a hidden thing. The voice which is most vocal against the state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is that of Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. People from remote districts of Uttar Pradesh are coming to meet Keshav Prasad Maurya’s camp office every day, which includes MLAs and people from organizations. Maurya is posting his photo on social media every day. Maurya has made his own place in Uttar Pradesh as the leader of backward classes of Bharatiya Janata Party. To prove this, they are highlighting the leaders representing backward classes. This is their USP in front of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. He knows very well that BJP is ready to do anything to get the backward votes which are slipping away from the party, especially the non-Yadav OBC votes. On Tuesday, his picture with Subhaspa Mukhiya, an OBC leader from Uttar Pradesh and Omprakash Rajbhar, a minister in the state government, was the center of discussion in the media throughout the day. Before this, her picture with Sanjay Nishad, another backward class leader, president of Nishad Party and minister in the state government, was also in the news. The question arises whether this OBC angle of Keshav in the ongoing power struggle with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh should be considered a coincidence or an experiment? Because after the election results, Anupriya Patel, head of another party of NDA, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and minister at the Center 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 in which it seems that Keshav Prasad has decided not to miss it, Chauhan.
1- Why is there talk of 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 is not even hiding it. The way he has been behaving since the first term of CM Yogi Adityanath could not be called satisfactory under any circumstances.
Lately it is starting to look like a rebellion. He did not attend cabinet meetings after the results, saying 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 coming to meet here, OBC allies of BJP are coming with more enthusiasm. Only after the BJP Working Committee meeting, Sanjay Nishad of Nishad Party had expressed his intentions by naming bulldozers as one of the reasons for NDA’s defeat in UP.
Should it be called a coincidence or an experiment that Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal (S) had asked similar questions related to reservation to the UP government, Keshav Prasad Maurya had also written a letter about the department of the ministry of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Asked. The public release of all the letters related to OBC reservation shows that this is more of an experiment than a coincidence.
2- Politics of non-Yadav OBC in Uttar Pradesh
Political analysts and pollsters had predicted that on the basis of the inauguration of Ram Temple and the popularity of Modi-Yogi duo, BJP would win the state in the general elections, but it did not happen. Actually, there were many reasons behind BJP’s defeat in Uttar Pradesh. However, it was mainly believed that the BJP suffered a loss of eight percent votes due to the decline in support of non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits. CSDS post-poll survey data shows that BJP has 61 per cent support from Kurmi-Koeri (loss of 19 per cent), 59 per cent support from non-Yadav OBCs (loss of 13 per cent) and 29 per cent from non-Jatav Dalits. Got support (loss of 19 percent).
Along with this, the party lost one percent votes of upper castes, two percent of Kurmi and Koeri, one percent of Yadavs, three percent of non-Yadav OBCs, two percent of non-Jatav Dalits and one percent of Muslims. However, it got about 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 the votes of these sections in the upcoming elections. The party has suffered the consequences of angering OBC leader former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh in such a way that it took two 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 second most popular in the country after PM Narendra Modi. He is second only to PM Modi in terms of election 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. In fact, the issue of saving the Constitution has become like an Aladdin’s lamp in the hands of the opposition which BJP is not able to control even if it wants to. Keshav Prasad Maurya is trying to explain to the organization that BJP in Uttar Pradesh can save the Constitution with its slogan only by making a person from a backward caste the Chief Minister. From the voting in favor of BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, it seems that if elections are held today, BJP will be out of power. The problem for 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 is a long-time BJP loyalist who comes from a non-political, humble background who found his way into the RSS, including the VHP. Like PM Modi, Keshav also spent his childhood in poverty. He claims that he sold tea and newspapers in his childhood. He participated in the Ram Mandir movement which changed the fortunes of BJP in UP, He is a one-time MLA and one-time MP from UP, He has held various organizational positions in the state unit, and when the leadership of BJP in UP When BJP came to power in 2017, many people saw him as a natural contender for the post of CM at that time.
In sharp contrast, Uttar Pradesh CM Adityanath is the head of Gorakhnath Math and a five-time Gorakhpur MP. Yogi is originally a Thakur from Uttarakhand. Along with this, he is popular in 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 is not related to RSS. But it is said that under the pressure of RSS, he was made the CM of UP and even today RSS stands behind him like a wall.