After Keshav Prasad Maurya meets BJP chief Nadda, Akhilesh Yadav takes a swipe

BJP chief JP Nadda held separate meetings with Keshav Prasad Maurya and state BJP chief Bhupender Chaudhary in New Delhi

LUCKNOW: A day after Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya met Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda in Delhi, Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday took a swipe at the BJP over reports of a rift in the state unit after Lok Sabha election debacle.

UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya (PTI)

In a post on social media platform X, Akhilesh Yadav claimed the BJP was too busy fighting its internal battles to worry about the public. “The BJP, which indulged in the politics of sabotage in the context of other parties, is doing the same internally. That is why the BJP is sinking in the quagmire of internal conflicts. No one in BJP thinks about the public,” Yadav said in the post, accusing the BJP of putting governance on hold.

The SP chief did not name any leaders in his post which comes against the backdrop of differences within the state unit over the causes of the party’s disappointing performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls in which the party could win only 33 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh.

In a separate post on X, the SP claimed Keshav Prasad Maurya had been targeting chief minister Yogi Adityanath at the instance of the party leadership in Delhi while the public suffered.

To be sure, Nadda’s meeting with Keshav Prasad Maurya and state BJP president Bhupender Chaudhary on Tuesday has stoked speculation that the party could make changes in the Uttar Pradesh unit.

There has been no formal word from the BJP on the two meetings. But BJP leaders have indicated that there was a possibility that Maurya, an OBC face of the party, may be given an organisational position given his discomfort with the chief minister.

After meeting Nadda, Maurya put out a post reiterating the central message of his speech at the BJP’s state executive meeting on Sunday. “The organisation is bigger than the government, the pain of the workers is my pain. No one is bigger than the organisation, the workers are the pride…,” Maurya, who is a member of the UP legislative council, said in a post on X.