New Delhi: “Thopne ka kaam mat karna (do not impose) and don’t ignore party workers who toiled tirelessly,” former chief minister and senior BJP leader Tirath Singh Rawat said at a meeting of the BJP’s state working committee in Uttarakhand Monday.
‘The worker is supreme’ is a mantra the BJP has begun chanting after its Lok Sabha poll performance which saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi come back for a third time, but with a reduced parliamentary majority.
Though the BJP won all five Lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand despite its relatively poor national performance, the state unit has been riled by its recent bypoll losses.
At the Monday meeting, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami reviewed preparations for future elections, and urged party workers to participate strongly in the upcoming local body polls and the bypoll in Kedarnath. There was a postmortem too on the bypoll losses in Badrinath and Manglaur.
Rawat expressed concern at the way party workers were treated though he did not name anyone. The former chief minister echoed the words of UP Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya who recently said a neta was a “nobody” and the worker was supreme.
In the first major meeting of the Uttar Pradesh BJP unit after the Lok Sabha seat losses Sunday, Maurya pointed out that “the party organisation is bigger than the government and nobody is bigger than the organisation”.
On Monday, Rawat said to a cheering cadre: “The worker has been working hard. That’s why we say here (in the BJP) that the leader is not the leader, the worker is the leader… it is the worker who makes the leader. These people we sit with today are neither leaders nor big men… Today you are here, tomorrow it will be someone else. Don’t forget your roots and don’t forget the workers.”
Though Rawat did not name anyone, many in the party claimed his message was for the state leadership. “Rawatji clearly said that leadership needs to stop imposing. He highlighted the fact that we need to consult everyone and then take a decision, something which we have not been able to do,” a senior leader said.
According to sources, BJP state president Mahendra Bhatt has also raised concerns over the performance of the party in the bypolls and said veteran workers were demotivated by the influx of leaders and cadre from other political outfits.
“It was discussed that some sort of criteria needs to be fixed for who all can join the party,” said a party leader.
A senior BJP leader however defended the recent losses, saying, “It is not huge considering the Congress retained the Badrinath seat and the BSP lost Manglaur. But the fact that we performed so well in the Lok Sabha and could not carry that momentum is a cause of concern.”
As Kedarnath is headed for assembly bypolls after the death of sitting MLA Shaila Rani, many within the BJP were concerned about its timing and feared that it may prove costly to the party which is yet to recover from the assembly bypoll loss of Badrinath.
The party is also concerned about the “resurgence” of the Congress and many felt a new strategy needed to be worked out to counter it. “They have been spreading a false narrative that we lost Ayodhya whereas we won the Ayodhya assembly constituency and lost the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency under which Ayodhya falls. As far as Badrinath is concerned, the seat was already with the Congress and we have done better this time in Manglaur,” a party functionary said.
With local elections just round the corner, the party wanted to highlight the “lies and fake narrative” being run by the Congress. “Party leaders have also been told to hold meetings with workers and contact them on a regular basis. They have also been told to inform the public of the work being done by the Modi and Dhami governments,’ said another leader.
The state unit is already struggling to counter the Congress which has accused it of hurting religious sentiments after Dhami laid the foundation stone of a temple in Delhi called Kedarnath.
According to priests of Char Dham, the construction of Kedarnath temple in Delhi’s Burari is against religious customs and traditions. Shankaracharya of Joshimath, Avimukteshwaranad Saraswati, has also criticised this initiative.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)