BJP makeover: discipline Rajnath's major worry

Even as BJP president Rajnath Singh is giving final touches to the team, his concern is more focused on refurbishing the party's image, particularly in setting up an internal command structure and enforcing discipline. Shekhar Iyer reports.

Even as BJP president Rajnath Singh is giving final touches to the team with which he plans to fight the Lok Sabha polls, his concern is more focused on refurbishing the party's image, particularly in setting up an internal command structure and enforcing discipline.

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Singh wants to put a full stop to internal bickerings that often come into the limelight, eroding the party's credibility when it should be seen as a fighting machine to take on the UPA government and the Congress.

He would be ushering in a "zero-tolerance" policy when it comes to open defiance or dissidence at any level. His intention is that, once the BJP's poll war plans are put in motion, preferably by mid-April, internal cohesion will get top priority.

Singh has apparently won support for his move from the RSS and leaders like LK Advani and Narendra Modi, who back his view that the BJP won't win confidence of the people without a modicum of internal discipline.

Singh has also told BJP leaders that unless the senior bigwigs set an example, it would be tough to enforce discipline. Singh would like senior BJP leaders to abide by the dictum that intra-personal issues are best addressed in party forum.

Often, some senior BJP leaders have said their outbursts are an "example" of inner party democracy, which Singh considers as "a terrible aberration" that affects the morale of BJP workers.

Most BJP leaders say internal discipline can be enforced if leaders, including Advani, do not condone acts of senior leaders like Yashwant Sinha, Ram Jethmalani and Shatrughan Sinha as an "expression of internal democracy."