Unwilling to be seen as playing peacemaker between the publicly bickering BJP leaders of Uttar Pradesh, the RSS has cancelled a coordination meeting with the party slated for Saturday.

Although the RSS and the BJP never officially announced the meeting, sources had claimed there would be one, presided over by Sangh joint general secretary Arun Kumar. They said chief minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy chief minister Keshav
Prasad Maurya, organisational general secretary Dharampal Singh and state BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary had been asked to be present.

A BJP leader claimed on Saturday morning that the meeting had been postponed following the cancellation of Kumar’s flight from Bhubaneswar to Lucknow.

However, another leader said: “The RSS wanted this meeting to be a secret but the BJP leaders spilled the information. The Sangh doesn’t want to appear like a peacemaker between BJP leaders who have been fighting and blaming each other for the party’s sliding graph in the heartland.”

Maurya had directly blamed the Adityanath government’s “apathy” towards party workers for the BJP winning only 33 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats this summer, compared with 62 seats in 2019. He had said that government officials had become too powerful under Adityanath and had started ignoring ruling party workers.

Sonam Chisti, vice-president of the Kinnar Kalyan Board with the rank of a minister of state, resigned on Friday night accusing the state government of insensitivity towards the people.

“I am in politics to help people but I find myself helpless. People come to me for treatment and other help and I send them to the officials. But the official misbehave with them and threaten to put them in jail,” Chisti told reporters on Saturday.

“I have made several complaints to the chief minister, but he didn’t take them seriously. I am of no use in the government, and I shouldn’t continue (in my post) without any (actual) power.”

Many in the BJP believe that Chisti is close to Maurya.

Adityanath had told a BJP meeting early this week that although party members were supposed to work for the party, they were busy sending “good morning” messages.

He appeared to be implying that BJP workers were more interested in getting their personal work done than in building the party’s image. The chief minister also
declared that he would continue to bank on government officials.

Maurya had also said “the organisation is always bigger than the government”, looking to obliquely blame Adityanath for the BJP’s electoral setback from Uttar Pradesh. His comments were believed to have the endorsement of the central leadership which was keen to be rid of the chief minister.

However, Adityanath hit back, getting a senior party leader to say that state unit chief Chaudhary should resign, accepting moral responsibility for the electoral defeats, in the spirit of Maurya’s comments. Chaudhary is believed to be close to the national leadership.

Chaudhary, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah two days ago, gave them a written report that backed up Maurya, saying the “dominance of the administrative and police officers had angered the party workers”, a senior party leader claimed.

“They felt isolated and withdrew from the election campaign,” Chaudhary purportedly wrote.

However, Chaudhary also blamed Modi’s slogan of “400-plus” seats, saying it had fuelled fears that with such a majority, his third government would change the Constitution and abolish reservations, a BJP leader said, speaking off the record.

“Chaudhary also said that BJP candidates had behaved arrogantly with the people, hoping that the ‘Modi magic’ would see them through,” the BJP leader added.

However, alluding to the reports about the central leadership’s intent to shunt out Adityanath, he said: “Chaudhary suggested (in his report) that removing senior leaders would hurt the BJP’s prospects. It would be better to work on corrective measures within the given system of the government and the party.”