Pankaj Chaudhary set to be next UP BJP president, sole nominee

Union Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, set to become the next Uttar Pradesh BJP President, with the party High Command appointing a Kurmi leader in the state organisation for the fifth time.

Choudhury is the only candidate to file his nominations for the post in 4 sets here at the state party headquarters on Saturday afternoon.

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Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, his 2 deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, outgoing President Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, former union minister Smriti Irani, along with a couple of ministers, were the proposers in the nomination papers and were present when Chaudhary handed over the papers to election officers Mahendra Nath Pandey and Vinod Tawde.

Now the nomination papers would be scrutinised and the time of withdrawal of papers is 4 PM today.

Chaudhary, a close confidante of Modi and Shah, is now certain to be elected to the post when a formal announcement is made tomorrow afternoon.

Piyush Goyal will announce the name of the new president on Sunday at the Lohia National Law University.

Earlier at 1 p.m., Pankaj Chaudhary arrived in Lucknow from Delhi by regular flight with Piyush Goyal and Vinod Tawde.

Pankaj Choudhary hails from Yogi’s stronghold, Gorakhpur. He is a seven-time MP from Maharajganj and belongs to the OBC Kurmi community.

The appointment of the state president of UP BJP was to take place on January 15, 2025, but due to Maharashtra elections, the UP by-elections, and then the Bihar assembly polls, it was delayed.

Political experts say that in view of the 2026 Panchayat and 2027 Assembly elections, the BJP has bet on Chaudhary, who comes from the OBC Kurmi community, because the Kurmi community has the second largest population after the Yadavs in UP.

The Kurmi community was considered a BJP vote bank in the state, but in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a segment of this community sided with the Samajwadi Party in the name of the PDA. Keeping this in mind, the BJP has made this bet.

Pankaj Chaudhary is a powerful leader and is considered a good planner. He began his political career as a councillor. He served as the Deputy Mayor of Gorakhpur and then became a Member of Parliament for the first time in 1991.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, 11 Kurmi MPs were elected from UP and of these, three were from the BJP and seven from the Samajwadi Party. The Kurmi vote has polarized and thus the BJP no longer wants the Kurmi vote to be divided.

The UP BJP has previously had four Kurmi BJP presidents: Vinay Katiyar, Keshav Prasad Maurya, Swatantra Dev Singh, and Om Prakash Singh. With the announcement of Pankaj Chaudhary’s name, he will become the fifth Kurmi-caste BJP president.

In Gorakhpur politics, Yogi and Pankaj Chaudhary are considered the two most prominent BJP leaders. Both have different political approaches. The decision to hand over the reins of the government to one and the organization to the other has significant political implications.