"Till now, too many things were centralised in Pramod’s hand. Now, the process will have to be de-centralised," said a senior BJP leader.
NEW DELHI : BJP officials thought fund-raising was dirty work, until they were surprised by the adulation the late Pramod Mahajan got for his enterprise in collecting donations. Now, helping the party fill its coffers is deemed a shining virtue.
A senior leader told DNA, “Till now, too many things were centralised in Pramod’s hand. With the reality slowly sinking in that we have to do without him, the process will have to be de-centralised.”
Though the second-generation leaders are quiet as usual, their friends and sympathisers are not. Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley have never been talked about as resource managers.
They were respected for being excellent floor leaders, strategists, and campaigners. But their friends now insist that the two were involved in fundraising. Only, they did it discreetly.
M Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar are other leaders who played a part, for a while, in managing elections in south Indian states.
Another senior party leader said the real responsibility of raising funds will fall on the chief ministers of BJP-ruled states. The CMs in question, with the exception of Gujarat's Narendra Modi, are seen to represent the third generation of the party's leadership. Some observers contend that these leaders' maturing process has been hastened.
Modi, of course, tops the list of leaders who will be expected to assume a larger role in shaping the party's future because he is chief minister of a cash-rich state and enjoys a warm rapport with industrialists. But it remains to be seen how much responsibility Modi would want in the BJP's affairs.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has shown signs of being an excellent organiser who can effectively mobilise resources. Rajasthan's business community and its resourceful diaspora count as her advantages.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and Jharkhand's Arjun Munda are the other hopefuls. The somewhat weaker players are Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, and derelict Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.
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