A HOUSE DIVIDED

Who was to blame for the BJP's loss of ground in UP? After a bruising round of self-interrogation, the party is roiled by a rift that puts even Yogi's future at stake

- Prashant Srivastava

On July 14, in a packed hall in Lucknow, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held its first state executive meeting since the 2024 Lok Sabha election results yanked away half the ground under its feet in Uttar Pradesh. Soil subsidence on that scale was bound to set off an inquisition. Who was to blame? The answer depends entirely on who's doing the asking, with self-exoneration built into that act itself. As suggestion and innuendo filled the air, deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya made the opening verbal salvo: "Sangathan sarkar se bada tha, bada hai aur bada rahega (the party organisation was larger than the government, is larger and will continue to remain larger)."

Maurya's words, met with cheers from the assembled BJP members, came as the first clear location signal of where the crack would appearand how it would grow. He went on to say, "Your pain and my pain is similar," suggesting that there existed a brotherhood of the aggrieved within Yogi Adityanath's regime. It may be partisans on one side who are eager to pin responsibility for the BJP's poor performance on its most iconic chief minister. And Lucknow's apparent acts of omission can at best only be a partial explanation, since it entirely papers sover New Delhi's strategic missteps. But that also seems to have created a synergy of purpose. For, the impact of Maurya's speech was swift. Within 48 hours, he was summoned to New Delhi to meet BJP national president J.P. Nadda, who in fact was present at the state executive meeting. As Maurya and state unit chief Bhupendra Chaudhary left for the national capital on July 16, there were murmurs about an impending "big decision" regarding a change in UP's leadership. Nothing came of it presently, but Maurya's supporters claim he would soon receive a "return gift" for voicing the party workers' concerns.