The BJP central leadership has finalised its pick for the party’s next state unit president and sought a consensus on it at a meeting with senior RSS leaders, Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, and other top state BJP leaders in Lucknow on Monday, The Indian Express has learnt. The name is likely to be announced this month.
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Sources said BJP national general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh and RSS sah sarkaryawah Arun Kumar first met with Sangh functionaries in eastern UP and the Awadh region at a hotel on Monday afternoon. Later, at a meeting at the CM’s residence, they informed Adityanath, Deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, current state BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary, and state general secretary (organisation) Dharampal Singh about the leadership’s choice.
BJP insiders said the central leadership at a recent meeting in Delhi had considered nine candidates for the job — three each from Brahmin, OBC, and Dalit communities — before making its pick.
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The top BJP and Sangh leaders on Monday also deliberated on other issues at the “Vichar Parivar Baithak”, including the completion of the main temple at the Ayodhya Ram Mandir complex, the Adityanath government’s plan to set up temporary detention centres for “infiltrators” and “illegal immigrants” in each district, and Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls going on in the state.
Sources said top leaders of both the BJP and the Sangh expressed unhappiness about a report from the party’s SIR monitoring team that elected representatives, including ministers, MPs, and other MLAs, were not showing interest in supervising the SIR process.
Sources said the leaders agreed on the need to publicise the completion of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir to emphasise to people that the BJP government had fulfilled its commitment. This is crucial in the context of the BJP’s loss last year from the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency, of which Ayodhya is a part, five months after the temple was opened to the public.
Sources said the RSS functionaries also shared with the BJP leaders their feedback on the functioning of the various UP ministries. This feedback was based on the coordination meetings that the Sangh and its different offshoots had last month with the ministers.
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