Gadkari Vs Munde in Pune too: Is absent senior leadership harming BJP?

The Congress in Pune, in dire straits after the most likely rejection of CWG scam-tainted Suresh Kalmadi’s candidature, will be rejoicing at the bitter internal wranglings in the city unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party. [caption id=“attachment_1122369” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Advani and Gadkari. AFP[/caption] The Gopinath Munde Vs Nitin Gadkari rivalry that has already marred candidate selection for some seats in Mumbai has also cast its shadow on the selection of a candidate for Pune. While Gadkari supporters are rooting for Pune’s BJP MLA Girish Bapat, a senior legislator, Munde is reportedly in favour of giving the ticket to BJP city unit president Anil Shirole. According to a report in The Economic Times, the Munde camp wants Shirole, because he lost to Kalmadi in 2009 by just 25,000 votes. “...given that Congress is in disarray because the party is not willing to give tickets to both Kalmadi and his wife Meera, Shirole has a good chance of winning this election,” the report says. In addition, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar has made it known that he is in the reckoning for a LS ticket from Pune, having been overlooked for a RS nomination. The Gadkari-Munde factionalism in the Maharashtra BJP is also seen as the chief cause of the widening rift between the BJP and its oldest ally, the Shiv Sena. With Gadkari making overtures to the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray all but threatened to break off the alliance and prepare his party to contest all 48 seats in Maharashtra on its own. The bitterness over the Pune seat is only one manifestation of the internal wranglings in the BJP . While Sushma Swaraj made her displeasure public over the possible merger of B Sreeramulu’s BSR Congress in Karnataka, the Bihar unit of the party is also sore over the tie-up with Ram Vilas Paswan, who has been an arch rival for them ever since he left the NDA citing Modi’s role in the 2002 violence in Gujarat. Even as the RSS-BJP debate on whether it is now time for the seniors of the party to make way for a new batch of leaders, it appears that the slow bowing out of the seniors from daily party affairs is impacting the cadre, some of who apparently feel rudderless in the absence of an Atal Behari Vajpayee or L K Advani. A report in The Hindustan Times says the absence of a “moral authority” in the form of such a senior leader is one factor contributing to the public and embarrassing tussles within the party. Possibly, a Murli Manohar Joshi or a Lalji Tandon would not have gone public with their unwillingness to give up their Lok Sabha seats for Modi or Rajnath Singh, the report argues. In each of these cases, the MPs in question have stated that they would have been less miffed had the senior leadership only reached out to them and discussed the options available. _Firstpost_ has argued earlier that two months away from the election on which the BJP has expended all its energies over two years, the party’s juggernaut has run into a series of rough patches. Right from the BJP’s booth-level kaaryakarta in Maharashtra who’s upset at the sudden overtures to the Bihari-hating MNS, all the way to the very top echelons of the party where Advani is reported to have cautioned party bosses about the slow metamorphosis into a “one-man party”, suddenly, the brickbats are not coming from Rahul Gandhi and the Aam Aadmi Party alone. Advani’s reported comments were promptly denied by the party, Swaraj’s unhappiness over a ticket to Sreeramulu have been brushed off. Regardless of how many seats the party wins in the coming election, the gap in terms of moral leadership does not bode well for the party.