Keshav Prasad Maurya the man in the middle as political pot boils in Uttar Pradesh
It was under Maurya’s leadership as BJP state president that the party returned to power in Uttar Pradesh after 14 years in 2017 and he was among one of the aspirants for the chief minister’s position back then but Yogi Adityanth took the reins.
Even as the political pot boils for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, the spotlight has turned on deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya amid his moves, manoeuvres, remarks and social media posts.
Addressing the party’s state executive meeting in Lucknow on July 14, Maurya, the BJP’s most prominent other backward classes (OBC) leader in Uttar Pradesh, made the remark, “The organisation is bigger than the government, has been, and always will be.”
As he has a history of strained relations with chief minister Yogi Adityanath, with the same surfacing intermittently since 2017 when the BJP formed its government under Adityanath, the remark raised eyebrows in political circles.
He further said doors of his residence at 7 Kalidas Marg are open for everyone. “I am a worker first and then a deputy chief minister,” he said.
The assertions were seen as the first public manifestation of all not being well in the party and the government weeks after the blame game in the U.P. BJP began in the light of the party unexpected underwhelming performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh and the need to make course corrections for desired results in the upcoming crucial by polls to 10 assembly seats and then the state assembly elections in the first quarter of 2027.
Days after his remark, Maurya was in Delhi, meeting BJP national president JP Nadda.
It was under Maurya’s leadership as BJP state president that the party returned to power in Uttar Pradesh after 14 years in 2017 and he was among one of the aspirants for the chief minister’s position back then but Yogi Adityanth took the reins.
Associated with the VHP-Bajrang Dal from the initial years in public life, Maurya also took part in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
He was elected to the Uttar Pradesh assembly from Sirathu constituency in 2012 and went on to win the Phulpur Lok Sabha seat for the BJP for the first time in 2014.
In the 2022 assembly election, Maurya was defeated by SP candidate Pallavi Patel in Sirathu,considered his stronghold. The BJP failed to open its account in the five assembly seats in Kaushambi Lok Sabha constituency.
While the SP won three seats, Sirathu, Manjhanpur and Chail, the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik led by Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya bagged Babaganj and Kunda seats. The BJP’s defeat in all the five assembly seats in Kaushambi dented Maurya’s position in the party though he was sent to the legislative council and made deputy chief minister.
The BJP’s defeat in Kaushambi, Prayagraj and Pratapgarh Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 election added to Maurya’s woes.
The three seats were considered his area of influence and the BJP was hoping to retain them but couldn’t as the shift of the OBC Maurya, Shakya, Saini and Kushwaha votes to the INDIA bloc raised questions over his hold on OBCs.
The BJP had projected Maurya as its OBC face and he was tasked with retain the party’s hold over the OBCs in the Lok Sabha election.
These losses and his own defeat in 2022 gave his detractors the ammunition to question Maurya’s standing as a leader with political heft. On the other hand, the Maurya camp said the setbacks were a reflection of the party’s OBC leadership being ignored in the state.
As for the latest political developments in UP, it was said that the top leadership in Delhi was not happy with the impression being given that the organisation and government were not on the same page in U.P. Understandably, JP Nadda’s meeting with Maurya and state BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary in Delhi on Tuesday was to caution them against sending out any such wrong message to the public, especially ahead of the bypolls that are a big opportunity for the party to regain momentum after the Lok Sabha results.
That, however, did not happen. A day after his meeting with Nadda, Maurya appeared to stick to his guns as he wrote on X, “The organisation is bigger than the government, the pain of the workers is my pain. No one is greater than the organisation, the workers are its pride.”
It is, however, not clear as to what he exactly wants to achieve through such posturing since he was not available for clarification despite repeated attempts on his known cell numbers.
This could be interpreted as Maurya positioning himself as a staunch party man, potentially aiming to align with the core cadre and grassroots workers who might feel sidelined by the government’s actions and thereby consolidate his position within the party on the one hand, and target chief minister Yogi Adityanath, even if indirectly.