BJP city chief not on star campaigners’ list

After the recent controversy on sidelining the BJP city unit chief Raj Purohit, the face-off between its two factions seems to have been erupted again.

Purohit’s name is missing from the list of star campaigners.

The state election commission has released a list of 20 star campaigners of BJP for the civic polls. It includes  names of Lal Krishna Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu, Gopinath Munde, chief ministers and state leaders such as Sundir Munguntiwar, Eknath Khadase and Vinod Tawade.

After the Sena-BJP-RPI(A) joined hands for the civic polls, a booklet was released about 10 days ago, mentioning their work in city. Apart from its national and state leaders, it contained the photos of Balasaheb and Uddhav Thackeray from the Shiv Sena, Ramdas Athawale from the RPI (A) but not the city chief’s.

Later, the party re-released the booklet with the city unit chief’s photo. BJP media in-charge for the civic polls, Atul Shah, said: “The names in the list are for the state and Purohit is the city unit president. It has nothing to do with him.”

Purohit was unavailable for comments.