Dy CM Maurya's cryptic remark points to rift in UP BJP

Uttar Pradesh deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya on Wednesday said the party is bigger than the government, a cryptic remark on X that has fuelled speculation over a "rift" in the Bharatiya Janata Party state unit.

"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," the post shared by the office of the deputy CM on X said.

It quoted a part of Maurya's address during the BJP's working committee meeting in Lucknow on Sunday. The post also had a picture of the meeting in the backdrop.

"The organisation was bigger than the government and will always be bigger. The doors of my residence at 7 Kalidas Marg are open to everyone. I am deputy chief minister later but first I am a worker," Maurya said in the meeting.

He also urged all the ministers, MLAs, and public representatives to respect party workers.

Maurya's post comes a day after he met BJP president J P Nadda in New Delhi amidst rumours of an alleged rift between him and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Neither the BJP nor Maurya said anything about the meeting while senior BJP leaders, including Uttar Pradesh Minister Swatantra Dev Singh and finance minister Suresh Khanna, have also remained mum.

Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has alleged "infighting" in the BJP and claimed it was harming people's welfare.

"In this fight for power, it is the people of Uttar Pradesh who are suffering," Yadav told reporters at the SP headquarters here earlier in the day.

"In the BJP's fight for power, governance and administration in UP has been put on the back burner. The BJP used to sabotage other parties but now the same is happening with it. The BJP is sinking into a quagmire of internal conflicts. No one in the BJP thinks about the public," Yadav said in a post in Hindi on X on Wednesday.

Responding to the SP chief, Maurya wrote on X, "SP head Shri Akhilesh Yadav ji, BJP has a strong organisation and government both in the country and the state while the SP's PDA is a fraud.

"The return of SP's hooliganism in UP is impossible as the BJP will repeat its 2017 performance in the 2027 assembly elections," Maurya said.

Before the Lok Sabha elections, Yadav had coined the slogan of PDA -- Pichhda, Dalit, Alpasankhyak (backward, Dalit and minority) -- to woo the voters of these communities.