Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Minister and BJP National President J P Nadda.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Though it continues to face delays over the election of National President, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s top brass has initiated a crucial feedback process to help choose the next leader.
The party, as per sources, is reaching out to its senior ministers as well as chief ministers, for feedback on who should be the party’s next president.
Details of caste equations, popularity and political considerations have been taken into account. A similar feedback process has also been used in the naming of the candidate for the vice-presidential elections.
Sources involved in the process said that the party has reached out to 86 key leaders in a bid to get feedback that will help them take the next move.
“This feedback is not designed to favour those whose leaders will emerge as the popular frontrunners
"Instead, it is done so that we have a deeper understanding of the caste equations at play, our political considerations and how popular a leader is,” a senior leader of the party, involved in the process said.
Some of the leaders spoken to are key ministers of the Cabinet.
Technically, the delay in the process has been caused by the delay in the naming of presidents in key states including Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana. Till now, new presidents have to be named in Delhi, Mumbai, Punjab and Manipur, too.
The party’s constitution states that presidents have to be named in at least 19 of the 36 states for the party to proceed in the presidential election.
“But the states that are yet to name presidents are key states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka. These are the states where most of our leadership is from, we cannot proceed without them,” said a member of the party’s parliamentary board.
The leader also said that over 100 people have also been reached out to before the party named its vice-presidential candidate.
The inordinate delay, many leaders in the party said, has been caused since the BJP and the RSS have not been able to come to an agreement on the name of the next President.
“The RSS has never been involved with the internal matters of the party since 2014, but this time, due to friction between the two, the RSS has put its foot down,” a party MP said.