BJP's bypoll defeat as Keshav Maurya not made CM, says UP minister OP Rajbhar

Terming disenchantment of OBCs as the reason for the BJP's defeat in by-elections, Uttar Pradesh minister Om Prakash Rajbhar said the backward classes were unhappy with the party as BJP leader Keshav Prasad Maurya was not made the chief minister.

"The BJP contested assembly polls with Keshav Prasad Maurya (a OBC) as its face but later Yogi Adityanath was made chief minister. Backwards supported the BJP in the hope that Maurya will become CM. The result of this anger reflected in the defeat of the BJP in bypolls", Rajbhar, who is cabinet minister and head of Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, told PTI over the phone.

Asked whether Yogi Adityanath is responsible for the defeat in bypolls, he said, "Government is responsible. The BJP should introspect about reasons of its defeat. It's up to the BJP whom to make CM. It's up to the party to make Yogi or Keshav as CM." The BJP lost both the Kairana and Noorpur assembly seats in the recent polls.

Tabassum Hasan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal won the Kairana seat by a margin of 44,618 votes, while Naeemul Hasan of the SP bagged the Noorpur Assembly seat by 5,662 votes.

The winning RLD candidate in Kairana was backed by the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. In Noorpur, the main opposition parties supported the SP nominee.

Against this united opposition, the BJP's all-out effort to stop a chain of losses in bypolls in the state since 2014 proved futile even though Chief Minister Adityanath led from the front.