BJP leader Sunil Shastri's defeat in the Uttar Pradesh council elections has forced the party leadership to think in terms of applying corrective measures to enforce discipline in the party's state unit.
Shastri was defeated as the party polled 161 of the 180 votes it should have polled if the MLAs had voted along the party line. Shastri polled only 20 votes and BJP minister Ram Chand Valmiki just scraped through having secured 23 votes after the last round of counting.
Senior party leaders would sit together after the budget session and hammer out a formula to make MLAs more accountable, a senior BJP leader said. He conceded that the time was now ripe to apply correctives.
Party spokes-person M Venkaiah Naidu said the top leadership had taken serious note of cross votings in the elections and that the party would inquire into the incident to identify those who did not vote as per the party line.
Naidu pointed out the difficulties as the voting for council elections was done through secret ballot "It will take time to find out those who had indulged in cross-voting. We would take action at the appropriate time," he said.
This is the second time that the issue of cross-voting by BJP MLAs has come to light. During the Rajya Sabha elections too party nominees failed to secure the required number of votes they were allotted. The party publicly accepted cross voting but took the matter lightly as all its nominees had won.
This time the situation had become more serious, a party leader said. There were problems in the state unit but the party was not aware that the party unit could degenerate to this level, he said.
No party leader has been able to suggest a solution to check this tendency. While some say that the voting should be open there are others who oppose it saying that this will be controversial and not favourable to the long term interest of democracy.
One party office-bearer argued that the party should stress on the public declaration of assets as this would reduce the extent of the role played by money as an incentive during such elections.
The BJP has provision for declaration of assets by its representatives, but it is not being rigorously implemented.
