BJP goes for rejig in states after Delhi debacle

Among a post poll realization after having Delhi polls that absence of a face cost dearly, the ruling BJP has started the exercise to tone up its state units, appointing new party presidents in three states on Saturday and effecting half a dozen changes in last three days.

On Saturday, BJP appointed Khajuraho MP Vishnu Dutt Sharma as its news state chief replacing incumbent chief Rakesh Singh, who is an MP from Jabalpur and was trusted lieutenant of former BJP chief Amit Shah, the Home Minister of the country. Earlier there was a speculation that Singh, who was party’s chief whip in Lok Sabha in 2016 before he was made MP party chief, could get an extension.

Sharma, a leader with deep RSS roots the man behind the emergence of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students' wing of the RSS in Madhya Pradesh as a prominent organization in the nineties, when BJP’s Sunderlal Patwa was the Chief Minister.

It is big responsibility for Sharma after serving as the national general secretary of the ABVP, had joined the BJP in 2013 as he takes over the party’s top post in the state at a time it is out of power after 15- year-uninterrupted rule after Kamal Nath-led Congress in the state stopped the long run of BJP under Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The 49-year-old Sharma is the second from Brahmin community to have got a key post after last another leader with deep RSS roots Gopal Bhargava was picked up Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly in January 2019.

K Surendran, who had spearheaded the agitation of BJP on Sabarimala in the state has been appointed as the new President of Kerala Party unit.

Before Surendran, P S Sreedharan Pillai held the post before the latter was appointed as Mizoram Governor in October last year. Surendran, who shot to fame after the agitation fetched substantial votes as candidate in both 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the a subsequent assembly bypoll in the state. Kerala has never been a BJP stronghold but off late, the BJP has raised its vote percentage in the state.

BJP chief Nadda also named Dal Bahadur Chauhan as BJP President of Sikkim.

On Thursday the saffron party had announced giving a full term to its Maharashtra unit chief Chandrakant Dada Patil and Mangal Prabhat Lodha as BJP Mumbai chief, formalizing their leadership role for a longer period in the party-ruled state it lost months ago.

Giving a good bye to its earlier decision of propping a non-tribal Chief Minister Raghubar Das in the tribal state Jharkhand, the BJP will induct prominent tribal leader Babulal Marandi back in the party, who had served as first Chief Minister from the party in 2000 when the state was carved out of Bihar. Marandi will be back in BJP after 14 years. BJP’s both former Chief Ministers Arjun Munda and Raghubar Das had served under Marandi.

The changes in the BJP organization in other states are being made along with a series of meetings in Delhi continuing for last three days to post-mortem what went so wrong that the party despite high profile campaign and mobilizing all resources could win just eight of the 70 assembly seats.

There is a clear view emerging in the party the pattern of state election outcomes starting from Gujarat in 2017 to Jharkhand in December last year and now Delhi, make it clear that the over-dependence on national issues and national leaders to won assembly polls is not working that much and the party has to find answers at the state level, hunt and project strong regional faces.

The party has taken note of the pattern of voters behaving differently in state polls and general elections vis-a-vis voting for the BJP as even in Delhi, the BJP lost 15 percent of its votes in this assembly polls in comparison to what it had got just eight months ago.