‘Pankaj Choudhary? Who?’ BJP’s UP Caste Math Hits a Nerve

Lucknow-based political observers argue that the BJP has admitted the PDA might of Akhilesh by choosing Choudhary for the party’s organisational face in Uttar Pradesh.

By MANISH ANAND

New Delhi, December 14, 2025 — The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after fretting for months has solved the Uttar Pradesh dilemma—caste conundrum and rising stock of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Union Minister of State Pankaj Choudhary will be officially announced the UP-unit chief of the BJP on Sunday.

Despite being a seven-term Lok Sabha MP and a Union Minister of state, Choudhary’s elevation throws up a blunt question: Pankaj Singh—who, exactly? That he is Union Minster of State for Finance, a deputy of Nirmala Sitharaman, also fails to bring familiarity for him.

If a politician cannot be widely known despite being a seven-term MP in Uttar Pradesh, his choice by the BJP reveals a new pattern. Caste and caste only, while anonymity brings no limitations.

Choudhary is a Kurmi by caste. He, thus, belongs to an assertive non-Yadav other backward caste (OBC). In Bihar, a Kurmi leader, Nitish Kumar, remains an undisputed king of the state politics.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah at the helm, the BJP’s top brass seems to have decided that caste overrides everything else. Even the choices for the posts of President of India and Vice President of India have to pass the test of castes.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief and former state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav turned the acronym PDA into a potent political weapon, grounding the BJP’s high Hindutva politics in Uttar Pradesh. His focus was assimilations of extremely backward castes, Dalits, and Muslims in the SP’s social engineering.

Lucknow-based political observers argue that the BJP has admitted the PDA might of Akhilesh by choosing Choudhary for the party’s organisational face in Uttar Pradesh. Though numerically not dominant, Kurmis in Uttar Pradesh are asserting their political aspirations, almost at par with Jats in the western parts of the state. While the BJP believes that Jats are saffronised, the EBCs in eastern Uttar Pradesh seem not full convinced with Hindu narrative of the party.

The BJP by picking up Choudhary for state chief has also broken the convention to strike a regional balance. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP state president will now belong to one region of the state—Purvanchal. This will also add fodder to conspiracy theories doing round in Lucknow that the BJP is writing a post-Yogi script in Uttar Pradesh.

The Hidden BJP Power War That Cost a UP Chief Minister His Post

Follow The Raisina Hills on WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us

Save

About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

See author's posts