Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath arrived in Delhi on Thursday evening amid concerns in the party about “internal sabotage” being one of the main reasons behind the BJP’s “disastrous” performance in the heartland state that dragged its numbers below the majority mark.

Adityanath, who was in Delhi to take part in a pre-scheduled meeting on Friday of the newly elected BJP and NDA MPs along with the CMs and deputy CMs was set to meet BJP chief J.P. Nadda for a “preliminary review” of the reasons behind the party’s shocking poll performance in UP, sources said.

UP BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary has also been summoned to Delhi for the review meeting.

Adityanath’s meeting with Nadda was likely to take place late Thursday evening in the backdrop of key leaders of the party who lost their seats in UP, indicating an “internal sabotage”, saying that “those who tried to put roadblocks in the path of Modi’s ambition will be identified and held accountable”.

The BJP has managed to win only 33 seats compared to 62 in 2019 in UP. Also, the victory margins of top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi and defence minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, have drastically dipped.

“I had apprehensions over something going wrong some 15 days before the polling…. It is a fact that brakes were slammed on some of the development works I had started in my constituency,” junior minister in the outgoing Modi government Niranjan Jyoti told reporters, dwelling on the reasons for her shock defeat.

Jyoti, a two-term MP seen close to Modi and Shah, lost from Fatehpur to the SP candidate. “Those responsible for placing roadblocks in the path of PM Modi’s mission (of 400-plus seats) would be identified and the issue would be put before the party organisation and the top leadership,” Jyoti added.

Sakshi Maharaj, who lost from Unnao, has not ruled out the possibility of “internal sabotage”. He said it was shocking how the BJP could lose so many seats in UP, where the Ram temple has been built and Modi’s welfare schemes have touched almost every poor family.

Privately, many leaders who have lost accused the “top leadership” in UP of not accepting their candidature wholeheartedly, which played a role in their defeat apart from the wider reasons of “Mandal politics” resurfacing in the state.

Party insiders feared that the “disastrous” performance could spark an ugly blame game between Shah and Adityanath, both said to be aspiring to become
Modi’s successor.