Uttar Pradesh: Who will be BJP’s choice for chief minister?
After BJP's dramatic victory in the Uttar Pradesh elections Keshav Prasad Maurya and Manoj Sinha are among the top contenders for the chief ministerial post
New Delhi: After securing a landslide victory in India’s most politically crucial state, Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will now have to choose a chief ministerial candidate.
Like in previous state elections campaigns, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the face of the party in the run-up to the polls. He was also its most tireless campaigner.
Keshav Prasad Maurya, the BJP’s state unit chief, is one of the top contenders for the post of CM.
“The state president Keshav Prasad Maurya was the face of BJP’s outreach towards members of other backward classes (OBCs). The decision to make Maurya chief of the party in Uttar Pradesh was carefully made with the idea of extending the social base of the party," said a senior leader of the BJP who was part of the team that prepared the party’s campaign strategy. Maurya was made chief of BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit in April 2016.
Maurya is a first time Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Phulpur, Allahabad. He was handpicked for the job of BJP state president by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah to mobilise OBCs and most backward classes (MBCs).
The idea of wooing non-Yadav OBCs had initially come up during the 2014 general elections when the BJP managed to win 71 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. “The BJP victory is because of wave in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Maurya tweeted after the historic performance of BJP.
But there are others in the fray too.
One such is union minister Manoj Sinha.
Sinha, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, is minister of state (independent charge) in the ministry of communications, and also minister of state of railways. He represents Ghazipur in the Lok Sabha.
Like in Bihar and Haryana, the BJP’s leadership decided not to announce a chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh .
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