LUCKNOW: With the poll bugle sounded in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP is facing problems galore with the turncoats. In the pre-election churning, maximum number of leaders from the BSP and Congress have switched sides with the saffron outfit. While senior leaders and MLAs flocking to a party is a good omen for it before the hustings, it also saddles it with dilemma: how to adjust these high-profile names without annoying loyal workers who had been toiling for a ticket.
And while the party is yet to announce its list and its CM face, the leadership has clearly made the ‘winnability’ factor as the only criteria for ticket seekers to attain the magic figure of 300 seats. “The party will go by the winnablity factor. The performance of ticket seekers will be taken into account during distribution,” said a senior BJP functionary.
Around 20 prominent leaders—including MLAs and former MPs, apart from hundreds of grassroot-level leaders—have joined the BJP. From former state party chiefs Rita Bahuguna Joshi (Congress) and Swami Prasad Maurya (BSP) to former MPs Brijesh Pathak (BSP) to over a dozen MLAs and a host of district-level leaders from other parties are waiting for a bonus to join the BJP.
“Other parties’ leaders who joined us recently are working for the organisation and people under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. They have not come on a promise of tickets,” said state BJP chief Keshav Kumar Maurya.
However, the predicament is compounded by the RSS caveat against rewarding too many ‘outsiders’ with tickets against loyal workers of the party.
“The BJP is a cadre-based party where every worker is treated with honour. For us, the organisation is supreme and party posts are allocated as per rules and requirement. We are the only party in which even a grassroot worker can reach top posts,” sais a state-level party functionary.
At a recent coordination meeting, RSS leaders Dattatreya Hosabale and Krishna Gopal—along with representatives of VHP, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)—cautioned the BJP leadership against repeating the 2012 faux pass of inducting the likes of Babu Singh Kushwaha, then health minister tainted with the NRHM scam.
“Such inductions had a great impact on the party’s performance. We ended up with just 47 seats. So we advised the BJP leadership to be cautious this time,” said a BJP leader. In the 2012 state elections, the party had fielded 70 turncoats who could not get more than 10,000 votes each.
The BJP leadership was also reminded of the blunder it committed in the Bihar elections when the party preferred hoppers to loyal cadre, resulting in a a crushing defeat.
Murmurs among the BJP cadre are palpable as new entrants are being given crucial party posts in the backward cell, schedule caste cell and women’s wing. These posts used to be occupied by party workers with an RSS background. Under the changed equations, deserters of other parties, viz. Swami Prasad Maurya, Jugal Kishore, Brijesh Pathak and Dara Singh Chauhan of BSP along with the Congress’s Ganga Charan Rajput, have been nominated to their BJP’s national council, which is entrusted with setting its agenda.
If highly-placed party sources are to be believed, turncoats are making claims to over 100 seats across the state. “Ticket aspirants are many, but since the BJP is a disciplined cadre-based party, we will go with the decisions taken by the top brass in the party’s favour,” said BJP spokesperson Chandra Mohan.