New Delhi: When Bharatiya Janata Party leader Keshav Prasad Maurya recently declared, at an important party meet, that “the organisation is bigger than the government, always was and will be” it was loaded with a tone of dissent. Maurya made an emphatic attempt to project himself as the voice of the common ‘karyakarta’ or party worker apparently neglected under the ruling party government in Uttar Pradesh helmed by Adityanath, who is both his colleague as well as an internal rival.
Maurya said he was a ‘karyakarta’ first before being the deputy chief minister, and demanded that the common worker be accorded respect and his or her issues be addressed on a priority basis. If we join the dots, Maurya’s speech was a stern signal to Adityanath and his coterie in the establishment that things can no longer go on as usual. It sounded personal as much as it was about reviewing the causes of the BJP’s poor performance in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha election.
It is well-known that Maurya shares an uneasy relationship with Adityanath.
The long-drawn autopsy of the 2024 election result has once again brought to fore the internal divisions and tussles within the BJP. While the party tries to contain the internal disharmony, there are signs that it could be facing its first major political dilemma, if not yet a full-blown crisis, in the key state ever since it came to power in 2017.
More than a month after the Narendra Modi-led election machine was humbled in the polls, the party cuts a picture of disunity. With Maurya making frequent and longer visits to Delhi in recent times and maintaining a studied silence about his intentions, speculation is doing the rounds if the party’s central leadership is planning to make adjustments to the power structure in the state, redefine Adityanath’s power and elevate Maurya’s status within the party or possibly within the government.
While the details are a matter of speculation in the local vernacular media, the BJP does appear to be in the midst of a churn. How does it want to logically explain its defeat in UP where it launched everything it had in its election arsenal, only to face a huge setback? Barely has the party been able to send out a message of confidence post June 4, that it already faces the complex task of recovering ground in the upcoming by-poll election for 10 assembly seats. The outcome on these seats will not in any way alter the overall number game but it will determine the actual depth of the BJP’s problems.
Also read: After Lok Sabha Poll Debacle, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah Battle Divisions Within
The Adityanath problem
The present situation of indecision has several elements to it. It not only reflects the distant relationship between the BJP’s two most popular state leaders but is also a symptom of the unaddressed question on caste equations and governance model that the party needs to tackle in its bid to rise from the setback. The dynamics between the state government (read Adityanath), party (Maurya and others) and the Centre (Modi) also need reassurance and clarity for the general BJP worker.
While we wait which way this will turn, it is important to trace the background of the current situation. This is not the first time that questions have been raised over Adityanath’s sovereignty.
Photo: X/@myogiadityanath
Ahead of the 2022 assembly election, there was huge speculation over his future as the BJP’s CM face. However, the party eventually went ahead with him and he delivered the goods. His success in the 2022 election against a spirited Opposition, cleared all doubts on his status, until the 2024 results changed the dynamics. The shift of the OBC vote towards the SP, the pointing of fingers at Adityanath for providing a free-hand to bureaucrats, high-handed approach of the ruling class, discontent among the common worker and BJP’s elected representatives, have all contributed to elevating Maurya’s significance. It’s no wonder that Maurya, on July 14 during the party’s state executive meeting in Lucknow, jumped at the opportunity and challenged the authority of his own government.
In 2017, when the BJP overthrew the Samajwadi Party government and won 325 seats out of 403 in the Assembly along with its allies, it did not have a declared CM face. Modi was the face of its campaign and Maurya the party’s state president. Maurya had been assigned the task primarily because he belonged to a non-Yadav OBC community.
After the results, till the last moment, it seemed that Manoj Sinha, the then MP from Ghazipur, would be green-flagged for the CM’s post. But surprising everyone, the party at the last minute decided to choose Adityanath, who was then MP Gorakhpur, for the top job in the country’s most populous state.
Adityanath not only carried with him a hardline saffron ideology but also wore the ambiguity of caste identity. Though born into a Kshatriya Thakur caste, his politics and persona have not been defined by his identity but by his adherence to a brand of Hindutva and affiliation to the Nath Sampradaya and the Gorakhnath Temple, of which he is head priest.
Also read: Mutiny in Awadh: The Story of Uttar Pradesh and the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections
The Maurya problem
To balance the caste equation, the BJP picked Maurya, an OBC, and Dinesh Sharma, a Brahmin, as his deputies. In his second term, too, from 2022, with Adityanath at the helm, the BJP repeated the same formula. Only this time, Brajesh Pathak, a defector from BSP, replaced fellow-Brahmin Sharma as the second DCM.
However, the BJP’s 2022 win came at a cost. The Opposition led by Akhilesh Yadav made huge gains in support base propelled by the shift in OBC votes in certain pockets, in particular, Eastern UP. The SP also improvised its narrative to a more direct one on caste representation and a building a bigger coalition of castes. The 2024 election result, in which the SP-led bloc won 43 out of 80 seats, was a continuation of that successful strategy of campaigning for better representation and rights for marginalized Hindu castes. The break of the BJP’s strong foothold on the Non-Yadav backward castes has long-term consequences for the party as its success in UP since 2014, and even in the 1990s, can be attributed largely to the success in engineering the support of these communities, many of which are associated with farming, horticulture, fishing, animal rearing and other traditional activities.
It is true that Adityanath complements Modi’s vision. He has often mimicked Modi style of governance, combining brute communalism with showcase of big investments. Adityanath has strived to build for himself a belligerent brand of politics, associated with ruthless expression of Hindutva, and marketed himself as an iron-fisted administrator who does not shy away from confrontation, sometimes even with the law.
Keshav Prasad Maurya (right) with JP Nadda and Adityanath. Photo: X/@kpmaurya1
Although a lot of political observers believe that Adityanath himself or rather the RSS sees him as the successor to Modi, and this might not have gone well with the top central leadership, in public Modi has consistently backed Adityanath. Modi famously dubbed him ‘UpYogi’, meaning useful for UP, and has also endorsed his unrestrained use of bulldozers to scare opponents and citizens, all in the name of law and order.
It is also true that when Adityanath took over as CM, although he was popular in East UP, he was seen more as a disruptor, who ran his own militia. But seven years into the top job in UP, Adityanath has metamorphosed into a popular leader, not restricted by the boundaries of Gorakhpur or even the state. Today, barring the Modi-Shah duo, the BJP hardly has any leader who is as dynamic or easily recognisable across the country as the saffron-clad, bald-shaven Adityanath. His speeches are well-received in election rallies in much of northern and central India.
The power problem
In UP, however, an impression has come to be created that under his rule, bureaucrats and police officers have acquired undue and unchecked powers, to the detriment of the party’s local karyakarta and regional elected representatives. There have been numerous cases of such disputes. Recently, a police sub-inspector in Lucknow was suspended after he was found guilty of misbehaving with a BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi when the latter was returning home after landing at the airport following a family trip. Cases of custodial deaths and demolition of property and homes have also brought bad press for the Adityanath establishment. On July 18, UP DGP Prashant Kumar, one of Adityanath’s most favoured officers, issued an advisory to his colleagues on how to prevent custodial deaths. Just two days before that, Adityanath himself took two steps back when he halted the digital attendance system for school teachers following protests and also allayed the fears of demolition of residents of three localities living near Kukrail canal in Lucknow.
The other argument is that the Centre plans to clip Adityanath’s wings. We don’t know for sure what’s happening behind the BJP’s close doors, but since 2017, Adityanath has resisted all attempts by the centre to keep a control on his powers and working. Most famously, he held out against the pressure to accommodate A.K Sharma, a former bureaucrat close to Modi, in UP politics as a deputy CM. In Adityanath’s second term, Sharma is a cabinet minister, holding important portfolios of urban development and energy.
With the BJP looking to ready itself for the political challenge of bringing harmony into its state unit, as well as the distant goal of 2027, a question on everyone’s mind in Lucknow is, will it happen by downsizing Adityanath and elevating Maurya.
It is a catch-22 situation for the party. It cannot take the risk of changing an elected CM mid-way in a sensitive state such as UP–that would be too drastic. On the other hand, however, it also needs to freshen up things, in particular to appease party workers, MLAs as well as cater to the slipping OBC votes and check the shift of Dalit support to the Opposition.
Supporters at one of Modi’s rallies in Uttar Pradesh. Photo: X/@BJP4India
So what are BJP’s problems?
Adityanath and Maurya bring different things to the BJP.
Adityanath, the head priest of the Gorakhnath Temple, has a successful electoral record in Gorakhpur and administrative experience of governing a large temple, he inherited from his mentor. Known for being a provocateur and rabble rouser when in the Opposition, after securing power, he has developed the image of a iron-fisted, ruthless Hindutva administrator and executioner of extra-judicial punishments.
Besides being a fluent orator and well-versed with Hindutva philosophy, Adityanath has also earned himself popularity through his governance model and saffron charisma.
Maurya, on the other hand, is an organisation man, the BJP-RSS’ own home-grown OBC product, groomed in Hindutva as part of the Sangh Parivar’s long-term efforts to appeal to non-Yadav OBCs. Maurya started his career as a boy Swayamsevak before going on to hold posts in the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, with which he also took part in gau raksha movements. The BJP often likens his background to that of Modi’s; they claim he sold tea and newspapers during his childhood just like Modi. In 2017, though the BJP contested the election without a declared CM face, Maurya’s supporters believed that if the BJP won, he would get the top job as the natural choice as party contested mainly on the anti-Yadav OBC plank. The BJP’s central leadership picked Adityanath. Maurya had to make-do with a nominal post of deputy CM. Throughout the 2017-2022 tenure of Adityanath’s government, Maurya faced taunts from the Opposition, which labelled him as a “stool wale deputy CM” to send home the message that the BJP only exploited OBCs for votes but was unwilling to give their son the supreme power or even a proper chair. This time too, Akhilesh Yadav, tried to take advantage of the situation when he, in a satirical vein, offered Maurya to jump ship to the SP along with 100 BJP MLAs. In return, the SP would back him for the CM’s post.
That Adityanath and Maurya are not perfect comrades became clear early on when Maurya was asked to shift out of the fifth floor of the ‘Annexe’ building of the secretariat, the power centre of the state in Lucknow. Maurya, on the other hand, refused to recognise the independent nature of Adityanath’s outfit Hindu Yuva Vahini, taking a moral high position that he was the original product of the sanghatan and not a mere implant. Today, there heightened anticipation in UP on Maurya getting a bigger role in BJP’s politics.
With the 2024 results ushering in a new wave of OBC and Dalit politics (read: focus on safeguarding the Constitution and reservations), it is incumbent upon the BJP to take big steps to reach out to these sections. A straightforward answer to that would be to appoint an OBC as CM before 2027, because it is through their votes that the BJP and its allies (importantly , all of them are OBC) could win 325 and 273 seats in 2017 and 2022, respectively. And naturally, Maurya, the RSS man, having served two terms as Adityanath’s deputy, would like to see himself as the direct replacement. Kalyan Singh was the last OBC CM of the BJP. Sooner or later, the party will have to consider picking an OBC as head of state if it wants to retain the credibility of these communities.
However, sacking Adityanath at this juncture, soon after the results, might discredit the ‘double-engine government’ card of the party. How does one adjust Adityanath, is the big question. Moreover, Maurya, for all the advantages his identity fetches the party, does not boast the same personality that Adityanath has cultivated over the years.
A disgruntled Adityanath might not augur well for the BJP in East UP, where it has already lost large swathes of electoral ground in both 2022 and 2024. The question is, how disruptive is the BJP willing to be? For now, it is in need of putting up a united front ahead of key by-poll elections and containing the cold war between Adityanath and Maurya.