Kerala BJP su“ers damage over disclosure by Sobha Surendran on Jayarajan issue
The BJP in Kerala appears to have absorbed some collateral damage in the aftermath of Sobha Surendran’s “give the game away disclosure” about her party’s “entrenched e©orts to woo” Left Democratic Front (LDF) convener E.P. Jayarajan to the NDA fold.
A section of the BJP’s State leadership appears mi©ed that Ms. Surendran had cast the party’s attempt to enhance its bipartisan appeal, bolster its top ranks and erase the “Hindutva slur” in a poor light by accentuating the outsize role of an alleged political xer. Ms. Surendran stirred the pot at a postpoll press conference in
Alappuzha last week by following up on Congress State president K. Sudhakaran’s politically tempestuous election-day claim that BJP’s Kerala in-charge Prakash Javadekar had met Mr. Jayarajan through the good oces of a political xer. She claimed she was also part of the BJP’s covert negotiations to win over Mr. Jayarajan.
Mr. Javadekar, under whose watch the BJP claimed Congress’ scalp by reeling in Anil K. Antony and Padmaja Venugopal, both scions of Congress families in Kerala, has not responded to Ms. Surendran’s “let the cat out of the bag” statement.
The “discontent” with Ms. Surendran’s ‘‘ill-considered expose’’ seemed manifest in a scathing Facebook post by BJP State vice-president P. Raghunath. He said the BJP did not need the favour of any dubious middleman to attract the public to the party. PM Narendra Modi’s “good governance was a magnet enough”.
He cautioned that hobnobbing with powerbrokers would not bode well for public gures.
Mr. Reghunath asked whether the controversy was a made-for-media narrative to eclipse the “Modi wave” sweeping Kerala by endorsing Congress’ line.
BJP’s national executive member P. K. Krishnadas fended o© the question of whether Ms. Surendran was in the wrong. He said Ms. Surendran had made a public statement and no BJP worker could be faulted for working to increase the party’s public in¬uence.
Ms. Surendran, BJP’s political rebrand known for her crowd-stirring demagoguery, has a history of running afoul of the BJP’s State leadership. In 2021, she had also claimed the she felt sidelined by the party unit in Kerala.