Lucknow: UP BJP on Monday announced its 712-member state working committee, four days ahead of the party meeting on Oct 30 to outline the strategy for the Assembly elections.The meeting is expected to be attended by Union home minister Amit Shah besides many senior members, including national general secretary and UP in-charge Vinod Tawde and CM Yogi Adityanath.The new committee comprises 548 regular members, 30 permanent invitees and 134 special invitees. The new committee has 267 more members than the previous one — announced in 2021 during the tenure of Swatantra Dev Singh — which had 445 members.The list, released by state BJP president Pankaj Chaudhary, covers party functionaries and members from the state’s six organisational regions — West, Braj, Kanpur, Awadh, Kashi and Gorakhpur.The highest representation of 120 members has come from Gorakhpur region. It is followed by Kashi region (comprising PM’s constituency Varanasi) with 108 members. The Awadh region, comprising Lucknow and Ayodhya, will have representation of 104 members, followed by Kanpur (79 members), West (70 members) and Braj region (67).The permanent invitees in the committee comprise 30 members, including PM Narendra Modi, defence minister Rajnath Singh, party veteran Murli Manohar Joshi, CM Yogi Adityanath and the two deputy CMs — Keshav Maurya and Brajesh Pathak. UP ministers, including Surya Pratap Shahi and Bhupendra Chaudhary, too have found a place in the list of permanent invitees. Union ministers Hardeep Puri, BL Verma, Jitin Prasada, SP Singh Baghel, Kamlesh Paswan and Kiri Vardhan Singh have also been included in the list.Three Muslims, including former Cabinet minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, BJP national president of minority Morcha Basit Ali and BJP MLC Tariq Mansoor, have also ben included as permanent invitees.The list of special invitees comprises 134 members, including former national general secretaries — Arun Singh and Dr RMD Agarwal and UP ministers including Suresh Khanna, Baby Rani Maurya, Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary, Jaiveer Singh Yogendra Upadhyay, Nand Gopal Nandi, Vijay Rajbhar and Dara Singh Chauhan.Former SP MLA Manoj Pandey, who was recently inducted into Yogi cabinet, too has been included as a special invitee. Pandey remains an “unattached member” in the UP Assembly and is yet to formally join the BJP.The higher numerical strength of the new state working committee is seen as a move to accommodate the growing pool of party functionaries who got left out of the recent organisational restructuring.The issue of a palpable “disenchantment” among several party workers, who could not be given a space in the organisational set-up and other slots, had been simmering before the state leadership for the past many days.The constitution of the state working committee is seen as a key step towards putting the party’s organisational machinery in place before the meeting. The body is expected to play an important role in translating the leadership’s electoral priorities into ground-level action through the party’s regional and district units.The timing of the announcement is significant, coming amid efforts by the BJP state leadership to consolidate organisation and strengthen its election preparedness against the Samajwadi Party and its ally Congress.Sources said the Oct 30 meeting will focus on the party’s broader electoral blueprint, organisational preparedness and coordination among its state, regional and district-level leadership. With Shah’s likely presence, the deliberations are expected to carry added political weight.For the BJP, which is seeking third straight term in Uttar Pradesh, the immediate challenge is to ensure that its organisational structure is fully geared up for the electoral battle. The state working committee’s announcement marks an important step in that direction, even as the party prepares for a wider mobilisation drive in the months ahead.
