Power lunch: Adityanath, RSS leaders meet at Dy CM Maurya’s home

PTI, Jun 22, 2021, 7:32 PM IST

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday joined senior RSS leaders for lunch at the home of Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, as the ruling party geared up for the assembly polls just months away.

RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale and two other functionaries, Krishna Gopal and Anil, spent an hour and a half at Maurya’s house, where the chief minister and another deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma were also present.

The meeting was described as “informal” and the guests blessed Maurya’s recently married son and daughter-in-law.

But some significance is being seen in this being the “first time” that the CM has dropped in at the official residence of his deputy, located close to his own in Lucknow.

Recently, replying to reporters’ queries in Bareilly, Maurya had said the BJP parliamentary board will decide under whose leadership the next assembly elections are to be fought, a remark interpreted by the opposition as a sign of a rift between the two.

A party spokesperson had dismissed the comment as the BJP’s traditional stance, but Maurya had been seen as a likely candidate for the CM’s post before the party chose Adityanath the last time.

Earlier, on Monday, Adityanath, his deputies Sharma and Maurya, and RSS leaders Hosabale Krishna Gopal had met BJP national general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh and BJP vice-president and Uttar Pradesh in-charge Radha Mohan Singh at the CM’s home.

The two central BJP leaders also met the party office bearers at the state unit headquarters on Tuesday.

A Maurya aide said Tuesday’s lunch was the first time that Adityanath visited the deputy CM’s official residence.

But before this, the CM had visited Maurya’s family home in Kaushambi district in October 2018, when the deputy CM’s father Shyam Lal Maurya passed away.

Maurya presented a saffron “angavastra” to Adityanath and white ones to his other lunch guests. His family posed for photographs with them.

His son Yogesh Kumar Maurya married Anjali Maurya on May 21.