By Rahil Nora Chopra
The Lok Sabha election results in Uttar Pradesh signify a dramatic change in the state’s political fabric, with Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party springing up a surprise and making eminent electoral gains against the powerful BJP. Samajwadi Party won 37 out of the 80 seats – making this its biggest performance ever in the state in Lok Sabha elections and succeeded in breaking the social engineering of BJP through the PDA (Backward-Dalit-Minority) formula. Now Kaushal Kishore, a former Union Minister in the Modi government, is going on a DPA (Dalit-Backward-Forward) journey to counter the PDA formula. This is being called BJP’s backdoor plan. The loss of the OBC and Dalit vote bank in the Lok Sabha elections shook the BJP to its core, as the party fell from 62 to 33 seats. BJP is constantly churning politics over UP and planning to regain its lost political base. On the other hand, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya met BJP president J.P. Nadda on July 16, as the party works out its strategy following its poor performance in the crucial State in the Lok Sabha elections. However, Maurya’s differences with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath are widely acknowledged even within the party, and his comment at a state party meeting that “organisation is always bigger than government and no one can be bigger than the organisation” was seen by many political watchers as a message to the UP CM. Maurya had made the remarks in presence of Adityanath and Nadda, while the chief minister blamed “over-confidence” for the electoral reverses in the state and suggested that the party could not effectively counter the opposition INDIA bloc’s campaign. The buzz is that BJP high command may appoint OBC leader Keshav Prasad Maurya as the new UP state president and Yogi Adityanath will continue as the Chief Minister who has aggressively pursued the party’s Hindutva agenda and maintained a firm grip on law and order.
