Lucknow: With Nitin Nabin taking over from JP Nadda as the new BJP president, focus is back on party’s long standing principle of ‘one person one post’.Nadda, who was given long extensions as the BJP president since 2024, now holds only one post —- that of a Union minister.But when it comes to Uttar Pradesh, the party has some exceptions — newly appointed stat unit chief Pankaj Chaudhary is also Union minister of state (finance), UP BJP OBC wing chief Narendra Kashyap holds a ministerial berth in the Yogi govt, and UP BJP vice-president Sunita Dayal holds the charge of Ghaziabad mayor.The ‘one person one post’ maxim is a key guideline emphasising that a party member should ideally hold either an organisational or govt position at a time to promote broader leadership and prevent concentration of power. Not surprisingly, the relinquishment of an organisational post by Nadda, despite holding a Union cabinet berth since 2024, will help the party reclaim the moral and ideological consistency the party rooted for, experts said.The appointment of Chaudhary, a 7-time MP from Maharajganj, as the UP BJP chief is seen as a strategic move to counter the opposition’s PDA poll narrative. However, the appointment blurred the distinction between party and govt, even as Chaudhary continues to shuttle between Lucknow and Delhi to work in two different capacities.A senior BJP functionary said that Chaudhary, considered close to the party’s central leadership, is likely to continue as a Union minister until a reshuffle in the Modi cabinet, expected after the West Bengal polls later this year.The same is the case with Narendra Kashyap, who also holds the dual charge of UP minister and state BJP OBC Morcha president. Kashyap has held the two posts since 2022, when Yogi govt returned to office for the second consecutive time and he was inducted as minister (independent charge) for backward class welfare and divyangjan empowerment.A section of leadership in UP BJP believes that Kashyap’s continuation as both a minister and OBC Morcha chief reflects a conscious political choice rather than an administrative oversight. “By retaining him in the organisational role even after inducting him into the cabinet, the party sought to ensure a direct alignment between policy delivery and political messaging targeted at OBC communities,” said a senior UP BJP functionary.So is the case with Sunita Dayal, who has continued as party state vice-president despite being elected as Ghaziabad mayor in 2023. Dayal’s dual posts add another layer to the pattern of institutional overlap within the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit.A UP BJP functionary said that her retention in the state leadership structure suggests that the party views high-profile urban local bodies, especially in politically sensitive regions like western UP, as extensions of its organisational apparatus, rather than purely administrative domains.A similar situation existed in the case of UP BJP leaders like AK Sharma, JPS Rathore and Daya Shankar Singh, who continued to hold the charge of state vice-president, state general secretary and in charge UP OBC wing for a few months even after their induction in the Yogi cabinet in 2022.
