Prime Minister Narendra Modi keeps BJP party guessing on Uttar Pradesh Chief Ministerial candidate

Sources in the party claimed that the Prime Minister would choose a leader who can deliver on promises made to the people in the run up to the Assembly elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BJP Headquarter.(Photo | PTI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BJP Headquarter.(Photo | PTI)

NEW DELHI: Even while Union Minister Manoj Singh, Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath and Uttar Pradesh state unit chief Keshav Chandra Maurya get mobbed by the MPs in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to keep the party leaders guessing on who would wear the crown of the largest state in the country. That the Prime Minister has not yet chosen an MP as chief minister in states won by the saffron outfit after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections has begun weighing high in discussions in the party circle, with attention turning onto MLAs, who could emerge as the surprise pick for the Lucknow post.

While a host of names have been doing rounds, which also include Lucknow mayor and BJP vice-president Dinesh Sharma, sources in the party claimed that the Prime Minister would choose a leader who can deliver on promises made to the people in the run up to the Assembly elections, which included waiver of loans of small and marginal farmers, taming the deteriorating law and order situations and putting UP on high economic growth to create millions of jobs within a span of a few years.

Amongst the MLAs Satish Mahana representing the Kanpur cantonment and Surendra Khanna, who trounced the Congress leader Jitin Prasada from Saharanpur have also begun doing the rounds as possible surprise pick of the Prime Minister as the chief minister of UP. However, Mahana and Khanna belong to the castes without much base in the state, while they also lack the administrative skills to “handle the pressure of leading a legislative party of 325 MLAs and a state of the size of UP”.

While the BJP chief Amit Shah has met the Union Minister for Home Affairs Rajnath Singh, the Thakur of Mirzapur has not yet opened his cards, with sources saying that he would choose to stay in Delhi as the Number 2 in the Modi Cabinet. “The RSS is keen that Rajnath Singh remains in the Modi Cabinet,” sources added.

Though Modi has not shown much concerns for the caste equations in choosing the chief ministers for Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, the party leaders claimed that the Prime Minister would be constrained to consider the OBC factor since the group flocked the BJP to give a historical majority. With the 2019 Lok Sabha elections not far away, sources said that Modi may think discovering another Kalyan Singh for UP to keen the successful social engineering consisting of upper castes-OBCs-Balmikis intact. 

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and BJP national general secretary Bhupinder Yadav would go as Central observers for the legislature party meeting on Thursday when the name of the future chief minister would emerge out. So, for the time being the chief minister hopefuls have begun making efforts to ensure that they don’t come in the media speculation having been aware that the Prime Minister has a dislike for those hogging the limelight and fuelling speculation.

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