Cadre irked as BJP welcomes ‘outsiders’

The alacrity with which the BJP is rolling out the red carpet for new entrants in poll-bound Delhi has led to widespread resentment in the party cadre.

Hours before the BJP was to announce its candidates for the 70 Assembly constituencies in the State, party president Amit Shah welcomed former minister and Congress MP Krishna Tirath to the party.

AAP leaders Shazia Ilmi and Vinod Kumar Binny have already joined the party.

There is, of course, the high-profile Kiran Bedi who joined the BJP last week with the anticipation of being projected as the party’s chief ministerial candidate in Delhi.

Since its victory in the Lok Sabha polls, the party has been fol lowing the strategy of projecting only “winnable” candidates in Assembly elections, regardless of their previous political affiliations.

Amit Shah strategy This is what Shah did while he was in charge of Uttar Pradesh during the Lok Sabha elections.

He followed the same process in the Assembly elections conducted in Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, where the BJP fared exceedingly well.

But while Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay ushered Tirath into the party’s State unit office at Pandit Pant Marg here, workers stood around openly voicing dissent. A group of party workers from Patel Nagar, from where Tirath is expecting to be fielded on BJP ticket after having been associated with the Congress for over two decades, were openly hostile.

As the group comprising Upadhyay, senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP Prabhat Jha, party MP Udit Raj and others walked alongside Tirath, a worker said: “We do not mind Kiran Bedi. She brings some value to the party. But why should we bother with weathercocks such as these (gesturing at Tirath)?”

As Tirath declared her commitment to “working for the people” from the dais, another worker exclaimed: “These people are shameless. We gave our best years to this party but when it comes to winning and forming government, we field Congress leaders.”

Modi wave However, as veteran BJP leader and former MLA Gauri Shankar Bharadwaj pointed out, the workers’ resentment is only a “sideshow”.

“You can entertain yourself by writing about it. But there is a Modi wave and the BJP will win. We won in Haryana where a lot of the candidates had come from other parties and we had a weak organisation.

Winning spree “We won in UP in the same way. Some amount of resentment is only to be expected when the party is on a winning spree,” he told BusinessLine .

According to Jha, who is the overall coordinator of elections in Delhi, the BJP’s prospects have only improved after Bedi joined the party. “Can’t you see why people are eager to join the BJP? It is because we are winning here,” he said.