BJP leaders up in arms against RSS appointee
CHANDIGARH: At a time when the BJP is bracing for upcoming bypoll to be held for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat, the internal bickering in the party has reached its peak.
And strangely, this time it’s not the internal rift between the state party leaders that has become an issue.
For the first time, the entire state unit is up in arms against its political ideologue Rashtriya Sway ams eva k Sang h’ s appointee and party’s state organisational secretary Di ne sh Kumar over his “autocratic” functioning.
RSS pracharak Kumar, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, was made state organisational in-charge in September 2015, replacing Ajay Jambal, who is now heading the organisational work of the BJP for northeastern states.
RSS usually appoints a pracharak as a state organisational in-charges who, without getting into lime light, monitors the functioning of state unit and its coordination with different wings of RSS. His role is to work as a coordinator for the party silently.
However, sources in the Punjab BJP told HT that right from the beginning, Kumar has failed on all fronts and has rather become a leader of a faction in the state unit, with few people backing him.
Kumar does not go along well with either of the two factions led by state B JP chief and Union minister Vijay Sampla and previous party chief Kamal Sharma, and both these groups have even complained to the party high command as well as the RS Stop brass in this regard.
The latest episode in this context is the resignation of Bathinda district BJP president Mohit Gupta from his post, who alleged that he has been facing “embarrassment” due to the acts of the state organisational secretary. “I respect him a lot, but I was left embarrassed on three occasions when he held meetings with district unit of the party, without even informing me. On one occasion, I was informed about the meeting only two hours before it, whereas many of my unit members got the message two days in advance ,” said Gupta, who has also served as the state chief of party’s youth wing.
Gupta, sources said, has also conveyed his displeasure in this regard to Sam pl a and senior leaders in Delhi.
Even the Sampla group, the sources said, has accused Kumar of running a parallel show in the state. “The role of state organisational secretary is to give directions to the office-bearers, but he has developed a group with two state general secretaries Manje et Rai and Jeewan Gupta on his side. They are giving different directions to workers at the ground level, without taking the state BJP chief into confidence,” said a senior leader close to Sampla.
The Sam pl a group, the sources said, has already taken up the matter with Ram Lal, national organisational head of the party. BJP leaders have also accused Kumar of talking “rude and rough” with senior leaders.
When contacted, Kumar said, “The issue is being blown out of proportion. If anybody has some problem he can directly tell me.”
On the resignation by the Bathinda BJP chief, he said Mohit Gupta was not attending the party meetings, citing family reasons.
Sampla was not available for comments despite repeated attempts made by HT.