Embarrassed by the adverse fallout of the month-long effort by the Bharatiya Janata Party State unit to woo the ruling coalition MLAs, the BJP Central leadership is learnt to have asked its State unit to drop the attempts at least for now.
According to highly placed sources in the saffron party, the Central leadership wants its State unit to focus completely on the preparations for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. Though a section of the Central leaders were reportedly kept in the loop while executing ‘Operation Lotus’, it is learnt that they had not been given a “proper picture” about ground realities.
The Central leadership is now said to be concerned over its image getting dented owing to the embarrassing fallout of the efforts to woo ruling coalition MLAs, particularly after Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy released audio clips containing the purported conversation of BJP State president B.S. Yeddyurappa.
The BJP Central leadership is reportedly concerned that the probe into the audio clip may further affect the party’s image irrespective of whether it reaches a logical end or stands the test of time.
What has upset the Central unit is the timing of these developments, just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Some of the party State leaders too feel that the manner in which the party was put in the dock during the just concluded budget session of the State legislature had affected its morale.
Some argued that the mood of the party Central leadership was palpable when Prime Minister Narendra Modi confined his speech to 26 minutes before a capacity crowd in Hubballi last week — two days after the release of audio clips — when he addressed the first public rally in Karnataka ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Steering clear of the audio clip episode, his speech was considerably shorter than the average 45 to 60 minutes during the Karnataka Assembly elections last year.
In fact, many prominent BJP State unit leaders admit in private that the Prime Minister’s public rally failed to achieve the intention of setting a tempo for the party’s preparations for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Several State unit leaders feel that the party could not focus on creating public awareness on any lapses of the government as its only attention was on toppling the government. “Now, we could neither topple the government nor succeed in properly highlighting public issues that were neglected by the government,” said a prominent BJP leader.