Shah is pushing for either Gajendra Shekhawat or Arjun Ram Meghwal, both union ministers of state, but Raje insists on her cabinet colleague Shrichand Kriplani.
New Delhi: The ruling BJP faces assembly elections in Rajasthan later this year and needs to pick a new chief for the state unit of the party but a tussle between national president Amit Shah and powerful chief minister Vasundhara Raje is holding up the crucial appointment.
Rajasthan BJP president Ashok Parnami, Madhya Pradesh chief Nand Kumar Chauhan and their Andhra Pradesh counterpart K. Hari Babu had all resigned last week. And while Rakesh Singh, the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, was promptly appointed as the head of the party in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, which is supposed to go to the polls alongside MP at the end of the year, is yet to get a new chief.
According to highly-placed sources in the party, while Raje is keen on MLA and state minister Shrichand Kriplani, Shah is pushing for Jodhpur MP and minister of state for agriculture and farmers’ welfare Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, or another union MoS, Arjun Ram Meghwal.
Sources say it was Shah who insisted on Parnami’s resignation, even though Raje was backing him and was against the idea. Getting Parnami to quit is seen by some as Shah’s way of undermining Raje, who is battling heightened anti-incumbency, unpopularity, and the baggage of serious reverses in bypolls earlier this year.
The Raje versus Shah battle is now playing out again, thus delaying the decision to name the new state chief.
Reasons for Raje’s resistance
According to sources, Raje is doing all she can to resist both Shekhawat and Meghwal’s names. Many in the Rajasthan unit feel if Shekhawat – a Rajput – is appointed, the crucial Jat community will be alienated, given the history of rivalry between the two communities. Shekhawat is known to be close to the central leadership of the party.
Kriplani, meanwhile, belongs to the Sindhi Punjabi community, as does Parnami.
Several MLAs who are Raje loyalists have been camping in Delhi to convince the party’s central leadership to not appoint Shekhawat.
In the 2013 assembly elections in Rajasthan, the BJP had decimated the Congress, winning 163 of the 200 seats. However, in the bypolls for the Ajmer and Alwar Lok Sabha seats earlier this year, the BJP faced heavy defeats at the hands of the Congress.
This, sources say, weakened Raje’s position considerably, thus giving the central leadership the upper hand.
Sources say the BJP’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is holding a meeting Friday, and if this issue isn’t sorted out by then, it may come up for discussion there.