Lucknow, Dec. 14 -- Living up to its reputation for throwing last-minute surprises and ending all speculation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to appoint Union minister of state for finance Pankaj Chaudhary as its next Uttar Pradesh president. Chaudhary emerged as the lone candidate to file his nomination on Saturday, making his elevation a foregone conclusion despite the formalities still remaining. The party is scheduled to make a formal announcement at its state convention here on Sunday in the presence of Union minister Piyush Goyal, who is the presidential election incharge for UP. Half-a-dozen names that had been doing the rounds for months after being shortlisted by the state leadership and sent to the Centre for a final call simply evaporated as the party zeroed in on Chaudhary, a seven-time Maharajganj MP and a prominent OBC leader from eastern Uttar Pradesh. Other names that got widely circulated included Dinesh Sharma, Harish Dwivedi, Dharampal Singh, BL Verma, Rama Shankar Katheria, and Vidya Sagar Sonkar, two each from the upper castes, OBCs and Scheduled Castes (SC), respectively. The party, however, sought to project a united front during the nomination process, with leaders closing ranks to signal complete unanimity around the name. Chaudhary, 61, is a leader from the influential Kurmi community, one of the most dominant OBC groups in Uttar Pradesh. He is currently serving as minister of state for finance in the Modi government. During his long political innings, he has defeated political heavyweights like Hari Shankar Tiwari, Virendra Shahi, Akhilesh Singh and Harshvardhan Singh. An alumnus of Gorakhpur University, Chaudhary entered public life through local politics, winning the election to the Gorakhpur Municipal Corporation in 1989 and later rising to the post of deputy mayor. Beyond politics, he is also associated with the corporate sector and serves on the board of an ayurvedic manufacturing firm. A seven-time MP from Maharajganj in eastern UP, he is considered close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A glimpse of this was seen in Gorakhpur on July 7, 2023, during the centenary celebrations of the Gita Press, when the prime minister, without any prior schedule, took time out to visit Chaudhary's residence. As the lane leading to Chaudhary's house in Harivansh Gali near Ghantaghar in Gorakhpur is narrow, the prime minister's vehicle stopped about 200 metres away. From there, Modi, accompanied by governor Anandiben Patel and chief minister Yogi Adityanath, walked to Chaudhary's house. Pankaj Chaudhary will succeed Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, a veteran Jat leader from western Uttar Pradesh, who was appointed the state BJP president in August 2022 in view of the farmers' protests in the region against the Centre's now-repealed farm laws. His elevation was widely viewed as an attempt to assuage Jat sentiment, particularly among farming communities agitating at the time....