Kurmi leader at top, UP Deputy CM Maurya says time to punch holes in SP’s PDA claim

The SP has been pitching for PDA – Picchda, Dalit, and Alpsankhyak (OBCs, Dalits, and minorities).
Assuring full support to Chaudhary, Maurya said that while the balloon of the SP-Congress alliance lost its air in the recent elections, but added that before winning in UP, the party has to emerge victorious in the Assembly elections in West Bengal due early next year.

With Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other senior leaders on the dais, Maurya asked party workers to raise the slogan, “Baki sab kuch jaiye bhul, yaad rakhiye mannaniya Narendra Modi aur Kamal ka phool” (Forget everything, and just remember Narendra Modi and lotus flower).” Lotus is the poll symbol of the BJP.

Chaudhary hails from the Kurmi community, the state’s most prominent non-Yadav Other Backward Class (OBC) group. He began his political career at the grassroots level in the Gorakhpur Municipal Corporation in the late 1980s, before becoming the Gorakhpur Deputy Mayor in the early 1990s. His first foray into national politics came in 1991, when he won his debut Lok Sabha election from Maharajganj at the age of 27. Though he launched his career from Gorakhpur, Maharajganj has become his stronghold over the years as he won this parliamentary seat six more times – in 1996, 1998, 2004, 2019, and 2024.

In 2021, after a Union Cabinet reshuffle, Chaudhary was given a Minister of State berth in the Finance Ministry as one of the party’s key OBC leaders ahead of the 2022 UP Assembly elections. After he retained his seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, he was again inducted into Modi’s Cabinet.