JAIPUR: The fight for one-upmanship within the state BJP, which has already reached Delhi, is snowballing into a major issue with state president Satish Poonia parking himself in Delhi to apprise party leadership about former chief minister Vasundhara Raje’s ‘absence’ from party meetings and functions.
This comes after Raje’s repeated complaints to home minister Amit Shah and national president JP Nadda over the treatment given to her by the state leadership.
Poonia reached the national capital a day before to attend state party president meeting with Narendra Modi and Nadda to be held on Sunday. He called on senior party leaders and RSS functionaries to brief them about the ongoing political situation.
“Raje has not attended the budget session so far and have been missing party meetings citing one reason or the other. Also, the repeated instances of her loyalists pitching her as the CM candidate on social media is making it difficult for party leaders as the internal rift under the wraps,” said a senior leader requesting anonymity.
Raje’s absence from the core committee meeting or from MLA meets before the assembly session has grabbed more eyeballs than the developments in the meeting is also a reason that party leaders want her to toe the line in the larger interest of the party.
“Her absence takes more space in the media and social media than the party’s agenda giving a bad impression to party workers and ammunition to the ruling party,” said a party source.
The episode of Raje’s loyalists forming social media pages ‘Team Vasundhara Raje’ and ‘Vasundhara Raje Samarthak Rajasthan’ came to the light in November 2020 and January 2021 respectively has taken the rift wide open. For the first time, Poonia told the public that the central leadership was aware of all the developments. “The parliamentary board of the party has the power to decide the action of the state unit,” sources said.
Since January, Raje meeting with Shah once and Nadda twice in Delhi has made it inevitable for the Poonia group to pitch their version before the party leadership. What makes the plot interesting is that Poonia has prepared an internal report stating rifts caused due to Raje, confirmed a source.
Raje’s contention that her loyalists have not found space in the state organisation and in the frontal organisations found to be true. The BJP minority morcha has refused to accompany Raje’s chadar to Dargah in Ajmer. “Former cabinet minister Yunus Khan asked the morcha to accompany him to Ajmer to offer chadar on behalf of Raje which was denied by the morcha stating that they don’t have information from the party president,” said a source.