The BJP’s two-day executive meeting which ended here on Sunday finally became an occasion for an open display of the party’s bitter infighting.
Many top leaders did not turn up
LUCKNOW: The BJP’s two-day executive meeting which ended here on Sunday finally became an occasion for an open display of the party’s bitter infighting.
The party’s “Hindutva hero” and national vice-president Kalyan Singh did not turn up, though he was in Bulandshahr in west UP. Party MP Vinay Katiyar, another Ram temple crusader, said he had to be in Orissa. Senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi, who hails from Allahabad, also stayed away.
Senior party leader LK Advani identified “antar-kalah” (infighting) as the single-most harmful factor for the party’s reversal of fortunes in UP. “The BJP graph continued to rise in all Lok Sabha elections from 1989 to 1998. But what happened after that? Why are we going down like this in UP,” he asked.
A party worker heckled: “You take care of the bickering at the top, things will smoothen themselves in the lower echelons.” The comment gave a clear idea of the sentiment among the party workers.
Senior leader Kalraj Misra admitted that the style of functioning of the BJP governments in the past, and the party’s “desperate efforts” to form the government with BSP support had disappointed the average party worker. “When we were running the government in UP, we ignored the workers. That’s one major cause why the worker did not rise to the occasion (in the assembly election),” he said. The BJP which had won won 88 seats in 2002, was reduced to 50 in the 2007 election.
The latest round of back-biting began just before the assembly election earlier this year. Former chief minister Kalyan Singh was made in-charge of party affairs in UP, but he had to contend with the expectations of a lot of other senior leaders in ticket distribution.
Besides, due to alleged differences with party president Rajnath Singh, Kalyan was projected as the party’s CM-hopeful much later in the campaign. After the BJP’s poor performance, Kalyan has stopped attending all party meetings. The party is now projecting former minister and the BJP legislature party leader Om Prakash Singh, who belongs to the backward Kurmi caste, as the BJP’s backward face in UP.
“Our next target is the Lok Sabha election which we expect would be held in early 2008,” Om Prakash Singh told DNA. “If we put up a united front, we can win 40 of the 80 seats,” he said.
But that seems a tall order for the BJP which has only 10 Lok Sabha seats from UP at present. The new state BJP president Ramapati Ram Tripathi is a non-entity, lacking authority and stature. Disgruntled leaders within the ranks promise to make the task even more difficult.
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