Amid speculation of a rift within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav said on Wednesday that a period of conflict and disorientation had begun in the ruling party with the ruling regime getting weaker day by day.
“A period of conflict and disorientation has begun in the BJP, which is getting weaker day by day. The BJP has split into camps. A BJP leader is rejecting a slogan from his own top leadership. A Chief Minister says there is no need to go on the backfoot, those who are jumping around will be made to sit down, someone is saying that the organisation is bigger than the government, an ally party is blaming the Delhi-Lucknow leadership for the defeat,” Mr. Yadav wrote on X.
He added, “In the BJP, strings are pulled to humiliate each other. Everyone’s strings are in different hands. The fight behind the scenes has become public. Not only the engines, now even the coaches are colliding with each other.”
U.P. Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya reacted sharply to Mr. Yadav’s comment, adding that the return of the SP in UP is impossible and the BJP would repeat the 2017 performance in 2027. “SP leader Shri Akhilesh Yadav ji, the BJP has a strong organisation and has government both at the Centre and State. The SP’s PDA project is a fraud. The return of the SP’s hooliganism in U.P. is impossible, the BJP will repeat 2017 in the 2027 assembly elections,” Mr. Maurya said on X. The PDA electoral front [Pichada, Dalit, and Alpasankhyak] which comprises the Backwards, Dalits and Minority communities, is a plank the SP has been using for a while.
Speculation has been gaining momentum of a “rift” within the BJP, after one MLA Ramesh Chandra Mishra called for a “major” decision and intervention by the party’s central leadership to avert a bad outcome in U.P. Earlier in the day Mr. Maurya through a post on X reiterated that the party is bigger than the government. “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 of the party,” he said.
Published - July 18, 2024 03:39 am IST
