Keeping up with UP | BJP’s dilemma as party weighs pros and cons of changing leadership in state

There are some similarities between 1999 and 2024 in the context of the ongoing political developments in India’s most politically important state, Uttar Pradesh. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, held after the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee failed to prove his majority in Parliament, the party’s tally of Lok Sabha seats in UP fell from 58 to 29 with many in the party accusing UP chief minister and senior BJP leader Kalyan Singh of sabotage and helping the Samajwadi Party, which won 26 seats. Deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and BJP allies Sanjay Nishad, Om Prakash Rajbhar and Anupriya Patel are believed to have indirectly targeted chief minister Yogi Adityanath, suggesting that his administration was not responsive to party workers. Soon after, Maurya posted on X: "Aaj lage jo dand, wahi kal puruskar ban jaata hai, nishchit hoga prabal samarthan, apne satya vichar ka, karmaveer ko farq nahin padta, kabhi jeet aur haar ka." He ended his tweet with, “Party workers are my pride.” The caste equation Maurya is from the Other Backward Class community and one reason for the BJP’s poor performance in UP was its inability to hold on to the rainbow Hindu coalition it had built in 2014 across class and caste divisions.