BJP makes state rejig; new chiefs in Delhi, Manipur

Having already delayed bringing many key changes in the organisation due to COVID-19, BJP on Tuesday appointed state chiefs for three states including Delhi where it hedged its bait Aadesh Gupta belonging to the trader community, which has backed the Sangh family for decades.

The decision to send the party'’ Poorvanchali face—well known Bhojpuri singer Manoj Tiwari came months after the party suffered a massive defeat at the hands of Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party in the state despite a whirlwind campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. Kejriwal also belongs to the trader community and his being the face of AAP has led to substantial chunk of BJP’s traditional voters from the community moving away from AAP.

BJP has gone to the polls in Delhi without projecting a CM face with many doubtful about projecting Tiwari even as he had been the Delhi BJP chief for more than three years after he replaced Satish Upadhyay in December 2016.

Delhi has a substantial chunk of Purvanchali voters, who earlier voted for Congress and had by large shifted to AAP after the decline of Congress. BJP felt Tiwari could, hence, get this chunk of votes to the party and help it break the Delhi jinx, a state BJP has not been able to win for 22 years after the decline of veterans Madan Lal Khurana and Sahib Singh Verma. The party tried with many faces like late Sushma Swaraj, Harsvardhan and Kiran Bedi but nothing worked. Harshvardhan, now Union Minister for Health has lent his weight behind Gupta with deep RSS roots and having served as a former mayor of North Delhi Municipal Corporation.

The party has once again handed over the baton to its trusted and tried tribal face in Vishnu Deo Sai, appointing him state chief after a gap of seven years after BJP lost power to Congress in 2018 after a 15-year-uninterrupted rule in the state. Sai was one of the sitting Lok Sabha MPs, the party did not field in Chhattisgarh in 2019 general elections.

He replaces Vikram Usendi. Congress has made Bhupesh Baghel, a leader from OBC its CM. So falling back on a tribal face is a natural choice for the BJP here. Congress state chief Mohan Markam is also a tribal. BJP has an OBC Dharamlal Kaushik as the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly. Chhattisgarh is a state with the highest 72 percent reservation in jobs and only last year OBC quota was doubled there.

In party-ruled Manipur, it appointed party spokesperson S Tikendra Singh as BJP state chief.

Before the current round of rejig, BJP had in February appointed Khajuraho MP Vishnu Dutt Sharma as new state chief in Madhya Pradesh, Dal Bahadur Chauhan as BJP President of Sikkim and K Surendran, who had spearheaded the agitation of BJP on Sabarimala in the state as the new President of Kerala Party unit.

Taking note of different mood of voters towards the BJP in choosing a government at Centre and in states, the BJP has decided strengthen its provincial leadership after tepid election outcomes starting from Gujarat in 2017, Jharkhand in December 2019 year and Delhi in 2010 where the over-dependence on national issues and national leaders cost the party in state polls.