New Delhi: When the Sikkim president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) D.B. Chauhan quit his post Tuesday, he expressed his “sincere gratitude” to the party’s high command in his resignation letter. However, speaking to the media the same day, he adopted a far more vitriolic tone about the high command’s “apathy”.
“I am resigning from the post of the Sikkim BJP president after getting totally disillusioned with the central leadership’s indifference to sort out various issues affecting the functioning of the party’s state unit,” he said.
The crux of Chauhan’s ire was that the party’s high command had not paid heed to the state unit’s “rightful demand” of joining the Prem Singh Tamang-led Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) government, even though the regional party was purportedly on board with the idea.
Speaking to ThePrint, Chauhan said: “My last meeting with the BJP president J.P. Nadda and with national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh was in June. Despite my submission to them that the central unit could use its influence to make the BJP part of the Sikkim government, they did not do anything. What was my role if I couldn’t address the concerns of the party cadres, so I resigned.”
Sikkim’s 32-member legislative assembly currently has 12 BJP MLAs, most of whom defected from the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), which had been in power from 1994 to 2019. The defection happened months after the 2019 state elections, where the BJP had registered a score of zero. The BJP in the state is now aligned with the ruling SKM.
Chauhan added that he appreciated that the BJP might not have wanted to “disturb” the alliance but complained that the party had been “apathetic” about Sikkim, and had not yet appointed a leader and whip of the party in the assembly.
However, with Sikkim going to polls in 2024, some leaders that ThePrint spoke to claimed that the high command’s decision to not push for a greater share in power may have been done keeping longer political goals in mind.
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‘Neither in power, nor in opposition’
B.D. Chauhan was serving the second out of his two successive terms as the state president of the BJP when he resigned.
It was during his tenure that that the BJP got a foothold in the state, starting with the defection of 10 MLAs from the Pawan Chamling-led SDF to the BJP in August 2019. A couple of months later that year, the BJP also won by-elections to two out of three assembly seats, finally making it a significant political force in the state.
BJP Sikkim general secretary Sudeep Pradhan told ThePrint that he was aware that the BJP MLAs wanted to join the government, but that the high command may have had “other” considerations. The CM, he added, had appointed several BJP MLAs as advisors.
A former party in-charge of Sikkim told ThePrint that the BJP faced two “basic problems” in the state — one flowing from the CM and the other from within the party.
“The first was that we wanted to be a part of the government, but the CM was not willing to give ministerial posts to BJP legislators. Instead, he offered seven BJP MLAs the post of ‘advisor’,” the BJP leader said.
The second problem, he claimed, was due to the BJP high command. “The leadership in Delhi was not interesting in pressing the issue [of ministerial berths for MLAs]. They thought that the CM was listening to every word of the BJP anyway so they wanted to continue with the arrangement as it was.”
Another BJP MLA from Sikkim added that the party was in limbo in the state— not quite a part of the ruling dispensation, and nor a member of the opposition.
“Largely in the northeast, politics run on sharing power. Whichever party is in power in Delhi either aligns with the state’s ruling party or sits in the opposition. The BJP hasn’t taken either of these positions. Neither are we in the opposition and nor are we in the government, despite having 12 MLAs,” he said.
When asked about friction with the BJP, SKM MLA Bishnu Kumar Sharma denied it.
“The SKM’s relationship with the BJP is very cordial and the CM respects the leadership. It is up to the BJP central leadership whether or not they want to be part of the government, but the CM has given advisor posts to BJP MLAs,” Sharma said.
‘Indecision is also a decision’
When the BJP engineered the defection of SDF MLAs in 2019, the party’s in-charge for the northeast states was Ram Madhav, who played an active role in the region’s politics, including in Sikkim.
However, since then Sikkim seems to have slipped down on the party’s list of priorities, local leaders have claimed. In 2020, the party had appointed Sukanta Majumdar as the state in-charge of Sikkim, but in September 2021 he became the president of the party’s West Bengal unit.
The in-charge post for Sikkim remained vacant for a year, until the party finally appointed Bihar MLC Dilip Kumar Jaiswal as the state’s in-charge this October. Sambit Patra is currently the party’s coordinator for the northeast states.
In the wake of his resignation, Chauhan also complained that Union Home Minister Amit Shah did not even spare “five minutes” to visit state leaders during his Sikkim visit a couple of months ago.
However, a Sikkim BJP leader said that mere apathy did not seem to behind the high command’s laidback stance.
“Sometimes, indecision is also a decision,” he said, on condition of anonymity. “It seems as if the party has decided to avoid annoying the CM ahead of the Sikkim assembly elections, which will happen in 2024. In any case, these MLAs are ‘borrowed’ and we only have them because they defected. We can win more seats only after coming into an alliance in 2024.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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