NEW DELHI: The BJP on Monday said the crisis in its Rajasthan unit had ‘blown over’ and hinted that Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly Vasundhara Raje ‘is the undisputed leader of the party in the state’.
Senior party leaders, including L K Advani and Arun Jaitley, spoke to Raje in the morning and asked her to pipe down. Raje was told that her grievances would be addressed and that also includes tweaking the state party unit to Raje’s liking.
She had gone public with her anger over her party colleague Gulabchand Kataria’s decision to take out a yatra in the state. With a majority of BJP MLAs and two party MPs submitting their resignation to Raje to express their solidarity with her, Kataria was forced to give up his plan. Raje’s supporters are now demanding the removal of state unit BJP chief Arun Chaturvedi.
“There was a misunderstanding and it has been resolved. The clouds have cleared now and rains are expected... Raje is the undisputed leader. She is the Leader of Opposition,” said BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar.
The genesis of the Raje-Kataria rift, however, said a senior party leader, was a ‘turf war between Kataria and party general secretary Kiran Maheshwari over Udaipur’. Kataria had made some remarks against Maheshwari, which she countered in the local media. With Kataria making his plan to take out a yatra, Maheshwari, one of confidantes of Raje, opposed it. Even the local state core committee decided against the yatra, triggering the crisis.
The central BJP leaders have conveyed to Raje that she ‘is the face of the organisation in the state’ and hence, ‘she should ask her supporter MLAs to take back their resignations’.
Raje confidante Kiran Maheshwari, who was in the Capital on Monday, is also learnt to have met the BJP brass. But Maheshwari
told Express that ‘she was in the town to attend a party meeting’.