Mahendra Pandey BJP UP president

Attempting to reach out to Brahmins who were feeling isolated after BJP's aggressive pro-backward politics in last UP polls, the party on Thursday appointed union minister Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey as its state unit president.

 

Pandey, who was also supervising PM Narendra Modi's Varanasi constituency, replaces UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya -- an OBC by caste.

Though the buzz was that the party might opt for a Dalit leader as its UP head to balance caste equations, the central leadership cleared Pandey's name to address the fear of alineation of Brahmins and prop up next generation of leader from that caste ahead of 2019 polls.

Party sources said that the minister has offered to resign to focus on the new assignment given to him.

The existing Brahmin leaders -- former party president Murli Manohar Joshi and Kalraj Mishra, a union minister -- are ageing leaving a huge void in the BJP, said party sources.

Kanpur MP and former union minister Joshi is out of favour since NDA government came to power owing to Modi's 75-year age cap for becoming a member of his council of ministers. Mishra is expected to be dropped after the cabinet reshuffle expected anytime now due to the same age barrier reasons.

Though upper castes have always remained with the BJP in UP, the advent of Mandal politics in the early 90s which saw the rise of SP and BSP provided opportunities to the Brahmins to explore regional parties. The BSP exploited the Dalit-Brahmin combination to get into the power.

 

The MP from Chandauli, Pandey's elevation adds to the importance the party is attaching to eastern UP since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma are from that region.

Born on October 15, 1957, in Gazipur, Pandey got a doctorate in Hindi, apart from doing Masters in journalism from the Banaras Hindu University. An agriculturist by profession, his maiden entry into the UP legislative assembly was in 1991 and for the first time became a state minister seven years later.