Lucknow:

Amid the buzz over a social media post by Uttar Pradesh’s Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, main Opposition Samajwadi Party’s leader Akhilesh Yadav today said the people of Uttar Pradesh are fed up with infighting within the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government. In a sharp response, Mr Maurya stressed that the BJP has strong governments and organisation at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh and the Samajwadi Party has no chance of a comeback.  

This comes against the backdrop of a remark by the Deputy Chief Minister that triggered speculation that all is not well within the Uttar Pradesh government. The BJP, however, has trashed this buzz. “The organisation is bigger than the government. No one is bigger than the organisation,” Mr Maurya said at a meeting of the state BJP working committee on Sunday. The remark, which following Mr Maurya’s meeting with BJP president JP Nadda, was widely seen as a veiled swipe at Mr Adityanath. 

“There is infighting in the government. BJP leaders are fighting among themselves. The people know about the corruption and are fed up with the game of thrones,” Mr Yadav said at a party event.

The Samajwadi Party chief had earlier said that the administration had been put on the back burner as the state’s BJP leaders compete with each other. “The BJP, which engineered splits in other parties, is now doing the same within. This is why it is sinking in the quicksand of infighting. There is no one in the BJP to think for the people,” he had said in a post on X.

On the buzz surrounding Mr Maurya’s remark, Akhilesh Yadav said the BJP “wants to stand with those who lost”. Mr Maurya, a former UP BJP chief, lost the 2022 Assembly election but was retained as Deputy Chief Minister. He is now a member of the legislative council.

Responding to the Samajwadi Party chief, Mr Maurya tweeted this afternoon that the BJP’s governments and organisation in the country and the state are strong. “The return of SP’s reign of goons in UP is impossible. BJP will repeat 2017 in the 2027 state polls,” he posted on X. Significantly, Mr Maurya was state BJP chief in 2017 and the BJP had scored a thumping win in that election. 

Speaking at the BJP state leaders’ meet, Mr Adityanath had said “overconfidence” cost the BJP dearly in the recently-held Lok Sabha election. The results of Uttar Pradesh came as a rude shock to the BJP in this general election, its score dropping from 62 in 2019 to 33 this time. The Samajwadi Party made huge gains to bag 37 seats.

“The percentage of votes that was in favour of BJP in 2014 and subsequent elections, BJP has been successful in getting the same number of votes in 2024 as well, but the shifting of votes and overconfidence have hurt our expectations,” Mr Adityanath said, calling upon party workers to step up preparations for the upcoming bypolls in 10 Assembly seats.

Mr Yadav said he was confident of a good show by the Samajwadi Party in the bypolls, the date of which has not been announced yet.  

On the upcoming state budget, Mr Yadav said, “The Centre says we are the fifth-largest economy globally. And UP talks about a 1 trillion dollar economy. The state government should tell us how much the Centre has helped in this case. The government in Delhi must put out the per capita income, if we become the third-largest economy, will we be able to match per capital income in developed countries?”

The Congress, meanwhile, has drawn a Kalyan Singh parallel. “I have an experience of 44 years in UP… The same thing is happening now when Kalyan Singh was removed by the BJP and only time will tell if there is another Kalyan Singh or if Kalyan Singh can overpower. We will have to wait and see why all this is happening. But one thing is sure: the honest BJP workers are really sad inside,” Congress leader Pramod Tiwari has said, according to news agency ANI.

The BJP has downplayed the issue. Union Minister BL Verma said there is no infighting in Uttar Pradesh. “The government and the organisation are doing their work. The organisation and the government compliment each other,” he said.

As many as 49 parliamentary constituencies in India, including Kaushambi in Uttar Pradesh (UP), will go to polls on May 20 for the fifth phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Ahead of the voting day, a video of women protesting and raising slogans against Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya is circulating on social media, claiming he faced “public opposition” in Kaushambi recently.

In the viral video, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Maurya is surrounded by people, including women, who were heard raising slogans against him. He is also seen trying to get the protestors to be quiet.

IP Singh, a spokesperson for the rival Samajwadi Party (SP), shared the video (archived here) on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption, “Seeing the protest, Keshav Prasad Maurya immediately ran away from the guest house along with Vinod Sonkar. In UP, BJP had to struggle for even 10 seats.” Archived versions of similar posts can be viewed here and here. (Mr Sonkar is the incumbent Member of Parliament from Kaushambi.)

Screenshot of viral posts circulating on social media. (Source: X/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, we found that the video is not recent and is unrelated to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The video is from January 2022.

What did we find?

A Google search led us to a video uploaded on YouTube (archived here) by news channel TV9 Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand on January 23, 2022. This video showed similar visuals as the viral clip and its description stated that Keshav Prasad Maurya faced opposition from women in his Sirathu constituency during the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

We also found a report published by Dainik Bhaskar on January 23, 2022, which included the exact visuals seen in the viral clip. The outlet reported that after announcing his candidacy for the Sirathu assembly seat (located in Kaushambi district) for the UP state elections, Mr Maurya visited Ghulamipur village in his constituency for the first time. The report added that when Mr Maurya reached Ghulamipur to meet local residents, some women closed the house doors, and some people raised slogans against him. Mr Maurya had also reportedly gestured at the women to quieten down before being escorted away by his security personnel.

Dainik Bhaskar’s report further noted that Mr Maurya was visiting the home of district panchayat member Poonam Maurya in Sirathu, whose husband, Rajeev Maurya, had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Women there were protesting against police action in the matter, and when the deputy chief minister arrived, they began raising slogans against him.

Several other media outlets, such as Navbharat Times, News18 Uttar Pradesh, and Prabhat Khabar, also reported on the January 2022 incident, corroborating the abovementioned details.

We also found that Mr Maurya held a rally in Sirathu on May 15, 2024, supporting BJP Lok Sabha candidate Vinod Sonkar. However, we came across no reports of people raising slogans or opposing him during the rally.

The verdict

The viral clip of women raising slogans against Uttar Pradesh Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya is of an incident from early 2022. It is unrelated to the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Therefore, we have marked the claim as misleading.

(This story was originally published by Logically Facts, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective.)