The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Uttar Pradesh unit has constituted a 10-member committee which will finalise the strategy for the next Lok Sabha election.
The panel will also help in selection of candidates and monitor poll preparations.
The high profile committee includes Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, his two deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, party’s organising secretary Sunil Bansal, general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak, SC/ST Commission Chairman and party MP Ram Shankar Katheria and one of the two vice-presidents of the state unit.
Bhupendra Yadav, who is looking after Uttar Pradesh affairs, will be the in-charge of this committee.
A senior party leader told ‘The Pioneer’ that each member, besides Yogi Adityanath, had been made in-charge of a specific region and asked to get in touch with the party workers.
The primary aim of these leaders is to get feedback and chalk out region-wise poll strategy.
“Uttar Pradesh is a big state having diverse geo-political gradients which cannot be controlled by one centre. The socio-political requirement of Bundelkhand is different from that of eastern UP. Similarly, caste equation in western UP is different from that in central UP. So, this committee will gather information and pass it on to Bhupendra Yadav, who in turn will convey it to the national leadership,” the senior leader said on condition of anonymity.
The decision to form the committee was taken after initial reports suggest that local party workers are disenchanted with the working of the government. There are talks of corruption with allegations that ministers and leaders are making money while the workers are being denied the benefit of the government. This committee will work behind the curtain to get the pulse of the workers.
The committee will also work in tandem with ‘vistaraks’, the unknown face of the party who work at the village level.
The committee members will gather information about the beneficiaries of the government schemes and those who are entitled for the scheme but are left out for some reason. This list will be passed on to the Chief Minister for further action.
“This committee is important because it will finalise the list of candidates for the next Lok Sabha election. The national leadership is likely to consider this committee’s recommendations before finalising the candidates,” the source said.
There are indications that the party will change almost 50 sitting MPs because of their inefficiency. The party had won 71 out of 80 seats in UP but lost three seats in the bye-elections to the opposition parties. Its ally Apna Dal has two seats.