With Union Minister of State Pankaj Chaudhary set to be elected unopposed as the next Uttar Pradesh BJP president, he would take charge of the state party unit at a crucial time ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections.
Several challenges await Chaudhary, some of which arise out of the BJP’s below par performances in the 2024 Lok Sabha and the 2022 Assembly elections in the state amid the principal Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP)’s PDA – picchda (backward), Dalit, and alpsankhyak (minorities) – push. Here is a look at five challenges facing the new UP BJP chief.
The first crucial task for Chaudhary would be to ensure effective coordination and communication between the BJP organisation and the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led party government in the state.
After the setback in 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP saw its seat tally almost halved from its 2019 performance, the party’s internal assessment found that “lack of enthusiasm of party workers” was among major factors behind it.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won 33 seats of the state’s 80 as against the SP’s 37. In 2019, the BJP had won 62 seats as compared to the SP’s five seats.
Sources said there are political posts in various corporations and boards where appointments have been pending for a long time. There have also been complaints from a BJP section that the administration in the districts was not addressing the grievances of local party leaders and workers.
Senior BJP and RSS leaders have in some joint meetings with the CM and state party leadership stressed on improving the coordination between the government and the organisation, sources said.
Pankaj Chaudhary is going to replace the outgoing UP BJP chief, Bhupendra Chaudhary, a Jat OBC leader from Moradabad district of western UP.
Bhupendra Chaudhary’s appointment in August 2022 was seen as a bid to strike a balance across the state’s regions, given that Adityanath hails from eastern UP’s Gorakhpur.
Pankaj Chaudhary hails from Gorakhpur, which would make his task of maintaining communication and balance with western UP affairs challenging, given the growing influence of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), an NDA ally, which is dominant in the region’s Jat belt.
While the 2027 UP Assembly polls would test Chaudhary’s leadership, he will also be required to keep BJP workers united to ensure the party’s victory in the 2026 panchayat elections. As the number of ticket aspirants remains high in the local body elections, Chaudhary will have to convince those denied tickets not to rebel and instead back the party’s official candidates.
For the Assembly polls, Chaudhary will have the responsibility of supporting the Adityanath government in countering any possible signs of “anti-incumbency” in order to secure a third consecutive term for the party.
Chaudhary has parliamentary experience of 35 years, having been elected as an MP from Maharajganj seven times since 1991. Before entering Parliament, he was elected as a municipal corporator and deputy mayor in Gorakhpur.
In 1991, Chaudhary was made a member of the BJP executive committee. But that was the only organisational post he held over his long political career.
Sources said he rarely had interactions with BJP workers outside his Maharajganj turf. “He never held any organisational post in the state. He has been actively participating in RSS programmes but never held a post there. That is unlike other former state presidents, who worked for RSS’s affiliates like Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). Hence, connecting with people across the state will be a new challenge for him,” said a Maharajganj BJP leader.
Chaudhary belongs to the Kurmi community, which accounts for around 8% of the OBC population in the state, having a significant presence in eastern and central UP. His selection as the state BJP chief is being seen as a strategic move by the party to counter the SP’s PDA campaign, which aims to win the support of the OBC, Dalit and minority communities.
But consolidating his own Kurmi group would be a challenge for Chaudhary because the community has never voted en masse for any party in the state.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, a large section of Kurmis voted for the SP-Congress alliance. In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had created an umbrella alliance of OBC parties leading to a decline in the BJP’s seat tally to 255 from 312 in 2017. The SP’s tally had improved to 111 in 2022 from 47 in 2017.
