If party insiders are to be believed, the election of the new chief of the UP BJP will be held immediately after the announcement of the names of districts unit heads.The present UP BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhury had said that the announcement of the names of BJP district unit chiefs was delayed due to the Delhi Assembly elections and the Mahakumbh.Significantly, the party’s national general secretary Vinod Tawde was in Lucknow recently. He held deliberations with party leaders and CM Yogi Adityanath over the organisational elections.It may be recalled that in 2017, when Keshav Prasad Maurya had been leading the state unit of BJP, the party romped home with a mammoth majority. However, in the new government, Maurya assumed the role of the deputy CM and the UP BJP got Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey as the new chief.After Pandey, the party’s central leadership appointed the then cabinet minister Swatantra Dev Singh as the party chief in the state. He led the party to victory in 2022 but with a reduced strength.“Swatantra Dev Singh was supposed to be close to the CM. Though the BJP returned to power under his stewardship, the graph of the organisation came down,” says Prof AK Mishra, a political scientist.Singh was replaced by Bhupendra Chaudhury, a prominent western UP Jat leader with a fair experience of working in the organisation. However, Chaudhury failed to deliver in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the party’s tally came down from 64 to 33. Moreover, during Chaudhury’s stint, there had been a lot of rumblings between the state government and the party organisation. Consequently, the top brass is treading cautiously this time while deciding the face to head the UP unit of the BJP.
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