After days of speculation, the BJP on August 25, 2022 appointed Bhupendra Singh, the Panchayati Raj Minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet as the Uttar Pradesh president of the party. He replaced Swatantra Dev Singh who resigned earlier this month.
Hailing from a Jat farmer family in Mahenderi Sikandarpur village of Moradabad district of Western Uttar Pradesh, Mr Singh, 54, has been an organisational man and is currently a member of the Legislative Council. The appointment is being seen as the ruling party’s effort to reach out to the Jat community which has been at the forefront of farmer protests in the sugarcane belt of the State. After Haryana and Rajasthan, Mr Singh is the third Jat leader that the BJP has catapulted to the position of state president.
Mr Singh was the regional in-charge of the party during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and 2017 Assembly elections and worked closely with the then party president Amit Shah. He is being seen as an RSS candidate who has the backing of the central leadership.
