Post-defeat, Raje calls meeting of core group
JAIPUR: A day after suffering a loss in by-elections, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje held a meeting of a core group comprising four senior cabinet ministers, state party president and central party representatives.
Political experts say following the poll defeat, the government is expected to go for course correction in the forthcoming budget.
Rajasthan BJP president Ashok Parnami, party’s organization secretary Chandrashekhar and state ministers Gulabchandra Kataria, Rajendra Rathore, Arun Chaturvedi and Yunus Khan attended the meeting that lasted for about three hours.
None of the ministers were willing to speak about the details of the meeting. “My lips are sealed,” one of them said. Raje, too, has not spoken on the defeat so far.
Refusing to divulge details of the meeting, Parnami said, “We will take feedback from MLAs, district organisation presidents and other office-bearers and then probe the reasons for defeat.”
The BJP has lost the two Lok Sabha seats and an assembly seat to Congress in the bypolls whose results were announced on Thursday.
The Congress had termed the victory as referendum of Raje government. “The results show that the BJP is highly unpopular in Rajasthan,” said state Congress president Sachin Pilot.
BJP leaders requesting anonymity said some legislators had expressed reservation over the party’s candidates, especially in Alwar, where Jaswant Singh Yadav was fielded.
The party is expected to do some course correction during the budget session starting from Monday. “One should expect a populist budget that may set its house in order to prevent a repeat of the rout in the Assembly elections slated for later this year,” said a political commentator Hari Shankar Goyal.