After bypoll defeat, Shah meets UP CM
NEWDELHI: Amid reports of a possible expansion in the Uttar Pradesh cabinet, the state chief minister Yogi Adityanath met Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah in the Capital on Monday.
The meeting comes close on the heels of the bypolls in 10 states, including UP, where the party faced a drubbing in the Kairana Lok Sabha constituency and Noorpur assembly constituency. This is the second time that the party faced defeat in bypolls in the state; it earlier lost bypolls in Adityanath’s bastion of Gorakhpur and the Phulpur parliamentary seats.
Though the party has said that the loss in bypolls does not indicate voter disenchantment with the BJP-led government, the verdict has set off concerns about the party’s fortunes in the state ahead of the 2019 general elections. In 2014, the party swept the Lok Sabha polls, bagging 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Though the BJP did not comment on the meeting officially, there was speculation that the two leaders discussed the possibility of inducing new faces in the cabinet, giving more representation to economically backward communities.
The party has been working out the arithmetic of putting together a coalition of castes to support its bid for re-election at the Centre. The effort has picked pace in the face of the alliance of the BSP, SP and the Congress to stop the BJP’s electoral juggernaut.
The BJP leadership is also concerned by issues such as the agrarian crisis in the state and the growing unrest among sugarcane farmers who are still waiting for the state government to fulfil the promise of releasing arrears. Adityanath also met deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya who is undergoing treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.