Giving room for speculations about another bout of factional feuds in the BJP state unit, a major section of leaders opted out of the core committee meeting held on Wednesday and the state office-bearers’ meeting held on Thursday.
Only 14 of the 24 state office-bearers attended Thursday’s meeting. Leaders like P S Sreedharan Pillai, A N Radhakrishnan, P K Krishna Das and others have opted out of the two-day meeting.
Though party state president explained that they were absent due to personal reasons, it is believed that some of them had kept away owing to their disapproval of the move to give another term for the incumbent president.
They wanted to elect a new president instead of giving another term for president V Muralidharan. BJP national president Nithin Gadkari was given another term in view of the general elections to be held in 2014 and the elections in the BJP-ruled states soon.
“The national leadership is in favour of giving another term to Muralidharan as there has been no allegations of corruption, vote-trading during his tenure. Moreover, the BJP candidates are getting more votes in the elections,’’ one of the state office-bearers, who does not want to be identified, said.
“If anyone wants to continue, he or she can continue. And if someone wants to contest there is no problem in contesting,’’ he said.
The state office-bearers’ meeting also reportedly decided to conduct a probe against P K Krishnadas, former state president, for holding talks with Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan during Neyyatinkara by-election. Senior leader O Rajagopal is learnt to have complained that state vice-president and national executive member M T Ramesh had not been active during the election campaign.
Meanwhile, one of the general secretaries of the party, A N Radhakrishnan, has reportedly expressed his wish to contest to the post of the state president. However, he was unavailable for comments.
V Muralidharan told Express that the party was seriously engaged in chalking out a campaign to enroll new members. A schedule has been fixed in this regard and the membership campaign will start from August 10.