BJP seeks veterans’ help in the last leg

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi has fallen back on its old guard – leaders belonging to Punjabi, Baniya, and Sikh community, who were sidelined by the state leadership earlier, to ensure victory in the municipal elections on April 23.

BJP’s national vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, who was appointed to supervise municipal elections, held a closed door meeting on Thursday with a group of party veterans.

The meeting was attended by senior party leaders — Vijay Kumar Malhotra, PK Chandla, Harcharan Singh Balli, Meva Ram Arya, and Ram Bhaj. Leader of the House in SDMC Subhash Arya, former treasurer of Delhi BJP Praveen Khandelwal, and former Congress leader Arvinder Singh ‘Lovely’, who had joined BJP on Tuesday.

“The party does not want to take a chance at this stage. They are experienced hands and have won several elections. These leaders were initially ignored but have been called back. We can’t afford to lose our conventional voters,” he said.

Malhotra told HT the senior leaders were called to discuss the strategy for last leg of campaign.

Malhotra was the Chief Executive Councillor of Delhi’s Metropolitan Council in 1967 (a post equivalent to CM) and deputy leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha in 2004.

Chandla and Meva Ram were MLAs from Kamla Nagar and Patel Nagar, respectively in 1993. Former MLA Ram Bhaj had won assembly elections twice from Sarojini Nagar seat.

Balli, four-time MLA from Hari Nagar, had served as industry, labour, and jails minister from 1933-98 in Madan Lal Khurana government. Khandelwal represents trader community and is national secretary general of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT).

“It was an attempt to bring all sections together. We were requested to undertake ‘whisper campaign’ to convince our loyal voters to support BJP,” said a leader who attended the meeting.