By appointing party veteran L. Ganesan as the Governor of Manipur, the BJP high-command appears to have done a balancing act in Tamil Nadu, where there were murmurs about the old guard not getting its due in recent years.
His appointment, insiders feel, could put to rest complaints that while relatively new entrants to the party were able to achieve a “meteoric” rise, the old hands, who built the organisation in a land dominated by the Dravidian parties, were not duly rewarded.
Third from T.N.
He is the third leader of the BJP from Tamil Nadu who has been honoured with the Governor’s post.
Earlier, V. Shanmuganathan served as the Governor of Meghalaya before his resignation.
Tamilisai Soundararajan who, as the party’s first woman chief in Tamil Nadu, tried to keep the BJP in the limelight but with nil electoral success, was appointed the Governor of Telangana months after she lost the 2019 Lok Sabha poll to DMK leader Kanimozhi. She is now holding additional charge as the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry.
Her successor in the party, L. Murugan, who sought to create a buzz with his ‘Vetrivel Yatra’, was recently inducted into the Union Cabinet as the Minister of State for Fisheries and Information and Broadcasting, despite losing the Assembly election in Dharapuram. Incidentally, he was the party’s State unit chief for just over a year.
The appointment of former IPS officer K. Annamalai as the BJP State president last month, less than a year after he joined the party, rattled seniors. Some of them felt that the party high-command was pandering to new entrants and political turncoats by giving them organisational posts, ignoring loyal workers. With Mr. Ganesan’s appointment, that criticism would now no longer be valid.
RSS roots
Mr. Ganesan, a native of Thanjavur district, has his roots in the RSS, and was sent to develop the BJP in the State in 1991. He also functioned as the general secretary and president of the State unit of the party. He was the vice-president of the BJP at the national level.
In 2017, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh, following a vacancy caused by the appointment of Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Najma Heptulla as the Governor of Manipur.
“It is a strange coincidence that Mr. Ganesan also has become the Governor of Manipur [replacing Ms. Heptulla],” said V. Maitreyan, former AIADMK MP and a long-time associate of Mr. Ganesan while in the BJP.