Despite his loss within the just lately concluded elections, the BJP retained Keshav Prasad Maurya as a Deputy Chief Minister within the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet, effecting a turnaround within the fortunes of the person thought-about to be the celebration’s Other Backward Class (OBC) face. Earlier this month, Maurya misplaced to Pallavi Patel of the Apna Dal (Kamerwadi) from Sirathu in Kaushambi district.
Sources mentioned a piece of the BJP management needed to shift Maurya to Delhi, however the deputy CM didn’t agree. With the 2024 Lok Sabha election marketing campaign more likely to see the Samajwadi Party (SP) vie extra aggressively for its non-Yadav vote financial institution, the BJP management concluded that it could be a danger to alienate Maurya, who has emerged as a distinguished OBC chief within the post-Kalyan Singh period.
Maurya represents the essential Kachhi-Kushwaha-Shakya-Maurya-Saini-Mali block. These communities represent 6.69 per cent of OBCs, as per a 2001 report of a Social Justice Committee arrange by then Chief Minister Rajnath Singh. The report had additionally estimated that OBCs comprise 43.13 per cent of the inhabitants (54.05 per cent in rural areas).
The BJP is troubled by the dearth of requisite votes from Kurmis — who’re the second-largest OBC group in UP after Yadavs, in line with the Social Justice Committee — and the SP’s positive factors among the many group. In the elections, the Akhilesh Yadav-led celebration’s Kurmi legislators defeated three incumbent ministers, together with Maurya, and wrested management of seven seats that the BJP both held or the place the incumbent MLA contested on its ticket.
When The Indian Express visited Sirathu earlier than the polls, it discovered the deputy chief minister’s marketing campaign faltering. Before quitting the BJP, fellow Maurya chief Swami Prasad Maurya even took a dig on the deputy CM, labeling him a “bechara (helpless)”. In the election, Kurmis, who’ve a major presence within the constituency largely voted for Pallavi Patel and the BJP-Apna Dal (Sonelal) alliance didn’t work in Maurya’s favour, mentioned sources within the BJP.
In 2017, Maurya was a Lok Sabha MP from Phulpur and the BJP’s state president.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
