RSS Chief, Yogi Adityanath's Big Meet Today, Days After Poll Results

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath - a senior leader of the BJP - and Mohan Bhagwat, boss of ruling party's ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are expected to meet this afternoon in Gorakhpur, which is the latter's Assembly bastion.

The meeting - sources call it a "courtesy meet" as Mr Bhagwat is in the Chief Minister's constituency for a RSS event, is to take place either between 2 and 4 pm or after the latter's visit to the Gorakhnath Temple.

The optics of Mohan Bhagwat meeting Yogi Adityanath are significant after the former's speech this week in Nagpur; Mr Bhagwat's speech was peppered with criticism about the way the campaign was conducted on both sides of the political divide.

If the RSS chief's comment was veiled, his colleague Indresh Kumar's was not; he slammed the "party which did bhakti of Lord Ram (a reference to building the Ram Temple in UP's Ayodhya, which was expected to seal a landslide win for the party) for its "arrogance". 

The RSS, however, dispelled talk of a split with its political unit; sources said the message was just a pick-me-up for the BJP's central leadership.

And as for Indresh Kumar's jab, RSS sources distanced the organisation from the comments and sought to flip it, declaring Lord Ram "stopped those (the Congress-led INDIA bloc) who became arrogant" at 241.

For the 2024 Lok Sabha election the BJP had set itself an ambitious target of 370 seats (400+ with allies) to form a third consecutive union government with a brute majority.

However, hobbled by a strong showing by the INDIA group, and pushback over policy issues, the party's previously formidable election-winning machinery managed only 240 seats - 32 below the majority mark - and was forced to rely on 'kingmakers' Nitish Kumar and N Chandrababu Naidu to complete its hat-trick.