As a part of the BJP’s two-day review meeting ahead of Uttar Pradesh polls, two BJP leaders from Delhi, BL Santosh and former Union Minister Radha Mohan Singh met UP deputy CM Keshav Maurya and Dinesh Sharma on Tuesday after meeting CM Yogi Adityanath. The BJP’s central leadership has been sent from Delhi to meet the key leaders of the party’s Uttar Pradesh camp and take feedback.
Amidst growing criticism of the Yogi government over Covid second wave mishandling, the review meetings are reportedly being held with an aim to revive the party’s image before the UP Assembly elections 2022. After the meeting, Sources have rubbished speculation that the Yogi Adityanath alongwith his two deputies will be replaced ahead of the polls
A BJP press release said the leaders were reviewing the work done by the party for Covid relief across the state in the last few months and earlier.
BL Santosh asked the Uttar Pradesh BJP leaders to give feedback about how the party’s different departments were functioning and what relief works were undertaken during the second wave of the pandemic. He was reportedly told there was a lack of coordination between the party and the government as the party leaders were unable to work in tandem with the bureaucracy.
The Yogi Adityanath government’s poor Covid handling caused a large number of deaths in the second wave has drawn sharp attacks on social media by the opposition and is the target of a sustained campaign by opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh.
The visuals of dead bodies floating in the river Ganga and mass cremations across the state have further extended the UP government’s misery. Such visuals from many UP districts have generated international headlines while the government denied claims and accused media for misreporting the situation.
Following which several state BJP leaders have voiced grievances against their own dispensation. Among those, the BJP MLA Rakesh Rathore were caught on camera saying if MLAs speak too much, then will have to face sedition charges. The video of the incident had went viral.
Uttar Pradesh Law Minister Brijesh Pathak, who was among the first to raise concerns about the party’s Covid-19 management was also called by Santosh, alongside Health Minister Jai Pratap Singh, Medical Education and Finance Minister Suresh Khanna, BJP Uttar Pradesh in-charge Radha Mohan Singh, state party president Swatantra Dev Singh and state general secretary in-charge of organisation Sunil Bansal.
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Sources said the BJP team from Delhi is also tasked with assessing what went wrong in recent Panchayat elections in the state, the results that showed big losses for the BJP in its strongholds Varansi, Ayodhya, Mathura and Gorakhpur.
However, the UP Panchayat polls results triggered trouble signal for the BJP as it preparations to fight for reelection in the state in less than a year.