Yogi Adityanath’s Troubles Are Far From Over

In 2017, the Yogi and Keshav Maurya were of equal stature – both were MPs. This changed once Yogi was appointed CM.

Differences within the Uttar Pradesh government’s top leadership have persuaded the mother organisation of Hindutva politics, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), to discuss the issue in its three-day consultations with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The meeting, to be held at the end of this month at Palakkad in Kerala, suggests that the war of attrition against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is unlikely to end any time soon.

Barely days after the defiance of his deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya was perceived to have failed, new tensions have surfaced in the state government.

Yogi knows he is being cornered, not by the RSS, which still has his back, but by his party’s top leadership. This was evident from a viral video where he pointedly did not greet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on a public platform. It suggested that perhaps he believed that the two leaders were behind his woes.

Two weeks ago, the chief minister sent a strong message to his detractors from the floor of the state assembly, declaring, “Sarkar chalegi, majbooti ke saath chalegi (the government will continue and run with stability and strength).”

Yet, within a few hours of this display of confidence in the Legislative Assembly, Yogi found his own party men – state BJP chief Bhupendra Choudhary in cahoots with leader of the Legislative Council, Deputy Chief Minister Maurya – had managed to send a Bill that had already been passed by the state assembly to a Select Committee for further scrutiny.

With the majority the BJP enjoys in both the Houses, the Uttar Pradesh Nazul Properties (Management and Utilisation for Public Purposes) Bill should have had an easy passage. It is rare for a party in majority to send its government’s own Bill to a Select Committee.

The Bill seeks to regulate the use of Nazul land (land acquired during colonial times) for public purposes, to prohibit its conversion into freehold in favour of individuals and to reclaim government land grabbed by the land mafia and lease violators. While the Bill affected residents in cities like Prayagraj and was opposed by BJP leaders from the area, none of them had raised objections when the Nazul Land Ordinance was issued in March, earlier this year. The critics became vocal only later when Yogi seemed vulnerable.  

According to media reports, as soon as the decision was taken to put the Bill on hold, Yogi’s two deputy CMs – Maurya, a member of the Legislative Council, and Brajesh Pathak, who was in the House in his capacity as a minister – were seen shaking hands.

An implausible attempt is now being made to show that the Nazul Bill was put on hold “unanimously” on the CM’s “orders”. All that these convoluted explanations confirm is that Yogi’s troubles are not yet over.

Ostensibly the BJP wants an OBC face as chief minister to regain the vote of the backward castes. Yogi Adityanath is a Thakur. However, Maurya is not necessarily his obvious successor despite attempts to project himself as a BJP organisational “insider” to the “outsider” tag often used for Yogi.

Maurya, however, is a defeated leader. He lost the last assembly election from the Sirathu assembly seat in his home district of Kaushambi to Samajwadi Party’s Pallavi Patel and had to be accommodated in the Legislative Council. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP faced defeat in all the Lok Sabha seats, barring Phulpur, in and around Kaushambi and Prayagraj where Maurya apparently enjoys influence.

On the other hand, the party won all the seats, where Yogi wielded influence and campaigned, except for Ayodhya and Basti. Political observers have suggested that even the outcome of the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat may have been different but for Yogi Adityanath.  

In 2017, the Yogi and Maurya were of equal stature – both were MPs. This changed once Yogi was appointed chief minister and the power balance has remained skewed in his favour since then.

Yogi’s reading that Maurya’s attacks may not be spurred by his personal chief ministerial ambitions could be on the mark. He probably sees Maurya instead as a convenient proxy for someone else who has ambitions of succeeding Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the opportunity arises. As such an opportunity may come before the next general election in 2029, it would help to clear a potential challenger like Yogi well before that.

Yogi’s fate may be determined by other factors as well. Weakened after the BJP's failure to get a majority in Parliament, Prime Minister Modi’s first priority will not be to oversee an orderly succession of leadership in the government but to ensure his own political survival. If removing Yogi as chief minister ensures his political longevity, he may not oppose efforts to unseat him.

If the BJP does not fare well in the upcoming state elections of Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, there will be further attrition in the authority of the party’s central leadership. Removing Yogi may become even more difficult then. So if he has to be sacrificed in the internecine war within the BJP it would have to be sooner than later.

However, the pertinent question remains, where will Yogi go if he is removed as chief minister? He is a popular leader whose appeal cuts across caste lines among Hindu voters. His Hindutva credentials by virtue of his saffron robes and lifestyle are even stronger than those of Prime Minister Modi. His obnoxious “bulldozer policy” has made him an icon of delivering “instant justice” for the majority community.

Having tasted political power and popularity, he is unlikely to return quietly to his Gorakhnath Mutt. Nor will his accommodation in a cabinet slot at the Centre make him any less of a contender for the top job after Modi.

It seems, therefore, that Yogi will remain a weapon in the RSS armoury. As a popular leader who can win elections, the RSS might support him as Modi’s successor, especially if he continues to lose elections.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)