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Uttar Pradesh: BJP brainstorms over Mission Opposition at core committee meeting
Possible MLC picks for six vacancies, organisational changes and party plan for civic polls also likely to have been discussed at the BJP core committee meeting at CM Yogi Adityanath’s official residence in Lucknow
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership deliberated on the party’s Mission Opposition at the core committee meeting held at chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s official residence here on Saturday.
The meeting concluded late in the evening. No leader was willing to go public on discussions held there. Mission Opposition refers to the party’s push to make a dent in opposition bastions while safeguarding its own Lok Sabha constituencies ahead of the 2024 parliamentary polls.
The party’s core committee is learnt to have also discussed possible MLC picks for the six vacancies (governor’s nominees), in the upper house of the state legislature, organisational changes in Uttar Pradesh widely expected to be announced shortly and the party plan for the civic polls likely after March. The BJP is likely to name some old hands for the six vacancies.
After Holi, Union home minister Amit Shah and party chief JP Nadda are also expected to hold rallies in the state.
The core committee meeting was attended by state BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary and general secretary (organisation) Dharampal Singh, who had only recently visited Delhi to discuss organisational changes in UP, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brijesh Pathak, along with a few others. The party leadership is learnt to have also discussed plan to further weaken the opposition by targeting their bastions.
BJP national general secretary Sunil Bansal had during his recent visit tasked the party cadres with ensuring regular connect with opposition-held Lok Sabha constituencies.
As if on cue, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP from Jaunpur Shyam Singh Yadav met chief minister Yogi Adityanath ahead of the core committee meeting, sparking considerable political interest. In January, Samajwadi Party MLA Maharaji Devi was seen attending a function organised by Union minister Smriti Irani in Amethi, her Lok Sabha constituency. Amethi was a Congress bastion that the BJP won in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP is now eyeing Rae Bareli, the adjacent Lok Sabha constituency represented by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in the 2024 general elections.
Rae Bareli is among the 14 Lok Sabha that the BJP lost in Uttar Pradesh in 2019. The others are Ghazipur, Nagina, Bijnor, Amroha, Lalganj, Saharanpur, Ghosi, Sravasti and Jaunpur (all won by BSP), Sambhal, Moradabad and Mainpuri (all with SP). The SP lost the Azamgarh and the Rampur Lok Sabha seats in June 2022 bypolls. It had won these seats in 2019.
From Sultanpur, another Lok Sabha constituency adjacent to Amethi, BJP MP and former Union minister Maneka Gandhi strongly denied rumours of her leaving the party.
“I am and will remain in the BJP and it’s up to the party whether to give ticket to me or not,” she said during her recent visit to her constituency.
