Uttar Pradesh BJP Proceeds With Organisational Overhaul, Cautious Approach Toward Defectors After Lok Sabha Losses

Buoyed by the assembly bypoll victories, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set for an organisational overhaul in Uttar Pradesh (UP) with the elections at booth, sub-division and district levels in December.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won seven of nine assembly seats in the November bypoll, partially compensating for the losses in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

However, since bypoll is generally known to favour the ruling party, the BJP, instead of getting over-confident after these victories, should work on long-term goals like the 2027 UP assembly election.

It was believed (read here) that one of the reasons for BJP's Lok Sabha losses in UP, where the party could win only 33 seats, down from 62 in 2019, was its over-reliance on leaders coming from other parties.

The party appears to have understood this as it kept active participation in the 2019 and 2024 election campaigns as one of the criteria for nominating oneself for the post of president at any level.

This criterion will ensure that defectors, coming from different parties, don't get quick elevation in the BJP, thus boosting the morale of the party's ground workers, who have been associated with the party for a long time.

The other criteria aim to ensure that the worker who nominates oneself for presidency posts is disciplined, has never faced disciplinary action and is free of any other allegations.

Any person who has previously served at any position within the party will be prioritised over others. The age limit for the sub-division president is 35 to 45 years and for the district president is 45 to 60 years.

The age limits will not only help maintain hierarchy within the party but also promote youth to come up. Reportedly, the party is also planning to encourage women for presidency roles.

These decisions were taken in regional meetings held on Tuesday (10 December). It was decided that the booth presidents would be elected on 12 and 13 December, thereafter, sub-division presidents would be elected.

The BJP has divided UP into six regions. The Avadh region meeting was chaired by UP BJP's organisational secretary Dharampal Singh and the Western region meeting by BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde.

BJP UP president Bhupendra Chaudhary chaired the Kanpur region meeting and former Union minister Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey chaired the Gorakhpur region meeting.

Similarly, former Bihar member of the legislative assembly (MLA) Sanjiv Chaurasia chaired the Braj region meeting and former Haryana member of Parliament (MP) Sanjay Bhatia chaired the Kashi region meeting.

It was decided that sub-divisions would send three names each for the presidency role by 15 December to the regional level. By 19 December, the sub-division presidents will be announced.

After this, the district presidents would be elected by 30 December, initiating the process of state BJP president where Chaudhary will pass on the baton after nearly two-and-a-half years of presidency.

As per Times of India, five Rajya Sabha MPs B L Verma, Baburam Nishad, Amarpal Maurya, Dinesh Sharma and Laxmikant Bajpai are contenders to become UP BJP president.