Speculation rife ahead of UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s Delhi visit and meeting with BJP central leadership

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 19

Speculation is rife ahead of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s expected visit to Delhi and meeting with BJP chief JP Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah.

Apparently state BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh and general secretary Sunil Bansal are already here for the meeting where the party’s “poll preparedness for Assembly elections, next year” will be discussed, according to sources.

The CM will discuss poll preparation and upcoming programmes, along with the response to the ‘Jan Ashirvad Yatra’, they insisted. However, the expected visit has again generated buzz about a possible Cabinet expansion in Uttar Pradesh. A senior UP leader recently said that unless the expansion and appointments to corporations are done this month (August) they will lose meaning given that the polls are just about six to seven months away.

The response to the ‘Jan Ashirvad Yatra’ (interaction and public meetings of the newly inducted central ministers) will also be a discussion point during the meeting, they say.

Party leaders insist the programme has been “tremendous hit”.

However, recently a BJP MLA’s car was also allegedly attacked in western UP’s Muzaffarnagar by people protesting the centre’s contentious farm laws. Budhana MLA Umesh Malik was attending an event in Sisauli village, the home turf of farmer leader Rakesh Tikait

Notably, this will be the third visit of Adityanath to Delhi since June when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah and Nadda amid speculation of a change of guard in the state. He was present in the Nadda meeting with MPs from the state, last month.