The BJP scrambled to close ranks on Monday, but the fissures over the candidature of party President Rajnath Singh and Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi from Lucknow and Varanasi, remain exposed.
Leaders react From the top, the leaders denied any rumblings of discontent over seat distribution. Rajnath Singh asserted that only the Central Election Committee (CEC) takes final decision on selection of candidates and Sushma Swaraj clarified that she had not, as was reported, walked out of the CEC meeting on Saturday. Simultaneously, senior leader LK Advani denied that he had ever said that he believed the BJP had become “a one man show” as a newspaper had reported last week.
Murli Manohar Joshi said he is a disciplined soldier of the party and will abide by whatever decision is taken in the CEC.
Amid these protestations of unity and discipline, the BJP’s sitting MP from Lucknow Lalji Tandon piped up to claim that he will vacate his seat only for the Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. At the same time, he did not seem so enthusiastic about extending the same favour for Rajnath Singh.
“From the block level to Parliament, I have represented Lucknow. I was born here and have always lived here. I have never tried to contest from anywhere else. If Modi contests from here, I will do everything in my capacity to ensure his victory as I did for former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee,” PTI quoted Tandon as saying. Asked specifically about Rajnath Singh’s candidature from Lucknow, Tandon said: “I do not know anything about that. I have come to know about it from the media.” The BJP has officially not declared any of these seats. The party has so far announced candidates for Maharashtra, Assam, Odisha, West Bengal, Tripura, Kerala et al, but no announcement has so far come for any of the battleground States — Uttar Pradesh (80 Lok Sabha seats) and Bihar (40 Lok Sabha seats).
The expectation is that a majority of UP and Bihar candidates will be declared on March 13 when the CEC meets again. Narendra Modi’s trusted General Secretary and former Gujarat minister Amit Shah has already stated that Modi should contest from UP.
On February 27, when the party’s CEC was meeting for the first time, a television channel sympathetic to Modi first quoted Shah on Modi contesting from UP and then announced a list of names that included Modi from Varanasi, Jagdambika Pal (who was still with the Congress at the time) from Domariyagunj, Kalyan Singh from Etah, Uma Bharati from Jhansi, Kalraj Mishra from Shravasti and so on.
Since then, there have been a spate of reports and simultaneous mobilisation of party cadre in Varanasi to project Modi’s candidature.
Veteran Murli Manohar Joshi, the sitting MP from Varanasi, has, in the meantime, inaugurated his grand election office in Varanasi.
Although Lalji Tandon’s apparent willingness to vacate the Lucknow seat for Modi indicated that the BJP’s PM candidate may, after all, want to contest from the UP Capital, local party leaders still seemed to be responding to his perceived inclination to contest from Varanasi. Six-time BJP MLA from Kanpur Satish Mahana, a strong contender for the party ticket from Kanpur, said on Monday that he is ready to withdraw in favour of Joshi.