Sources said the party appointed the 15 “caretakers” while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath assigned constituencies to the ministers. However, a party insider claimed there were no differences between the party and the government. “They are working with each other to ensure victory,” said the source.

The appointments come within months of differences emerging within the party in the crucial state during a review of the parliamentary election results. The review concluded that discontent among party workers over the alleged neglect by the state government machinery contributed significantly to its poor performance that saw its tally dip from 62 in 2019 to 33. Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, among those who appeared to criticise Adityanath in the aftermath of the Lok Sabha poll results, even publicly said that the “sangathan (party) is bigger than the government.”

State Transport Minister Dayashankar Singh who has been deployed in Phulpur said the party’s focus was on addressing its workers’ problems, executing development projects, and coordinating with the local administration.

Bypolls in nine constituencies have been necessitated by the resignation of MLAs who have now moved on to Parliament while Sishamau will vote for a new MLA after its previous representative Irfan Solanki of the Samajwadi Party (SP) was convicted for harassing a woman over a land row.

The SP won five of these seats in the 2022 Assembly polls while the Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), then its ally and now in the BJP-led NDA, won one. The BJP bagged three constituencies and its ally NISHAD Party won one seat.

The Milkipur constituency in Ayodhya district is high on the BJP’s radar. It is one of the five Assembly segments under the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat of which Ayodhya is a part. The BJP lost the parliamentary seat to the SP’s Awadhesh Prasad despite an aggressive Ram Temple push, leading to a loss of face. The BJP has now deployed ministers Surya Pratap Shahi, Girish Yadav, Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh, and Satish Sharma to oversee the bypoll preparations, apart from MLC Awanish Kumar Singh and senior leader Pushpendra Pasi.

Emphasising the importance of winning Milkipur, a BJP leader said, “We have already started a door-to-door campaign where we are telling voters that the SP-Congress combine misled them on issues of reservation and Constitution in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. This time, a proper communication channel is being maintained between the government and the party.”

Since his Lok Sabha victory, the spotlight has been on Prasad who is often seen in the Lok Sabha with party chief Akhilesh Yadav and the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lower House, Rahul Gandhi.

Meanwhile, another seat that the BJP is looking to wrest from the SP is Karhal that Akhilesh gave up to retain the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat. The ruling party has assigned the constituency to state vice-president Brij Bahadur Bhardwaj along with Jayveer Singh, Yogendra Upadhyay, and Ajeet Pal. The BJP has already held three meetings here, with Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak attending one such meeting on Sunday.

“The SP has been winning the seat due to the influence of the Yadav family, which uses unfair means to win elections. This is not going to happen in the bypoll as the constituency has a significant number of Baghel, Shakya, Kshatriya, and Brahmin voters too, who will support the BJP,” Bhardwaj said.

The BJP has assigned overseers for the three seats contested by its allies RLD (Meerapur) and NISHAD Party (Majhawan and Katehari) in the 2022 Assembly polls. Former Bijnor district president Rajiv Sisodia will oversee affairs in Meerapur along with three ministers, including Anil Kumar of the RLD, while four ministers have been deployed in Majhawan. Three ministers have been deployed in Katehari.

The BJP has deployed four ministers in Kundarki that SP’s Zia-ur-Rahman gave up to retain the Sambhal Lok Sabha, while three have been assigned the responsibility for Ghaziabad, which was won by the party’s current Ghaziabad MP Atul Garg in 2022.

Meanwhile, the SP on Monday appointed in-charges for six of the 10 Assembly seats. While senior leader Shivpal Singh Yadav will supervise the party’s efforts in Katehari, Prasad and UP Legislative Council LoP Lal Bihari Yadav have been assigned Milkipur. Chandauli MP Birendra Singh has been given the responsibility of Majhawan while MLAs Indrajeet Saroj and Rajendra Kumar have been named the in-charges of Karhal and Sishamau respectively.