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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced its second list of candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections after an over three-hour long meeting, marked by lack of consensus over giving tickets to tainted leaders like Karnataka’s B S Sriramulu and state’s former chief minister B S Yedyurappa. The meeting also saw the emergence of a ginger group comprising party patriarch L K Advani, senior leaders Murli Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj.
Joshi and Swaraj walked out of the meeting before it ended. Party leader Ananth Kumar later said Swaraj had to attend a function in Bhopal, while Joshi had to return to his “karya kshetra” or work area. Although Kumar didn’t specify, his allusion was to Joshi’s current parliamentary constituency, Varanasi.
Sources said Varanasi was one of the points of contention in the meeting. Swaraj, a source said, questioned party president Rajnath Singh for trying to force Joshi out of Varanasi. A section of the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit wants prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to contest from the seat.
The developments in Saturday’s meeting are noteworthy, considering Joshi and Advani haven’t always enjoyed a good rapport and Swaraj considers Advani her mentor. Some in the party believe the effort to make Joshi vacate Varanasi is a signal to the old guard comprising him and Advani to make way for the younger leadership that Modi leads, and that this move has the backing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), too.
Joshi and Swaraj also questioned the party’s willingness to admit BSR Congress and its leader Sriramulu into the party fold, as also the need to give Yedyurappa a ticket from Bellary. Sources said Modi remained quiet throughout the meeting, even as Swaraj and Joshi questioned party chief Singh before walking out.
The list of 52 candidates the party announced on Saturday has Yedyurappa, who had to quit BJP in the wake of corruption charges and rejoined recently, as its candidate from Shimoga. The second list of candidates covers six states of Karnataka, Odisha, Tripura, Kerala, Assam and West Bengal. Among other prominent leaders fielded by the party include another former Karnataka chief minister D V Sadananda Gowda from Bangalore, North, party general-secretary Ananth Kumar from Bangalore, South and journalist-turned-politician Chandan Mitra from Hoogly in West Bengal. Candidates for other contentious seats like Bellary were not announced.
Party’s Karnataka chief Prahlad Josh said the state unit recommended BSR Congress be allowed to merge with the party. However, Swaraj and Joshi’s protest in admitting Sriramulu, who considers controversial mining barons Reddy brothers as his godfathers, deferred the decision. On Friday, Swaraj had tweeted she was opposed to Sriramulu’s entry into BJP.
Kumar said the party would announce the names of the candidates for the rest of the country, including the crucial states like UP and Bihar, on March 13.
He said Yedyurappa was a “well known peasant leader” of Karnataka and dismissed corruption charges against him as “mere allegations”. “We have released a winning list,” said Kumar.
The party has so far announced candidates for 107 seats. It announced candidates for 20 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, five in Assam, 17 in West Bengal, five in Odisha, three in Kerala and two seats in Tripura.
