Mizoram Guv acts on BJP’s SOS, quits post to contest against Shashi Tharoor
Rajasekharan’s resignation comes in the wake of the BJP’s Kerala unit asking the party leadership to recall him and make him a candidate from the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
Mizoram governor Kummanam Rajasekharan on Friday resigned from his post, nine months after he was appointed in May 2018.
Rajasekharan’s resignation comes in the wake of the BJP’s Kerala unit asking the party leadership to recall him and make him a candidate from the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat against sitting Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
An official communique from the President’s office said that Rajasekharan’s resignation had been accepted and Governor of Assam, Prof Jagdish Mukhi, has been given additional charge of the Mizoram, “in addition to his own duties, until regular arrangements for the office of the Governor of Mizoram is made”.
Talk about Rajasekharan’s resignation had been doing the rounds earlier. A senior BJP leader had said that the former Mizoram governor was willing to return if the party leadership gave him the nod.
Rajasekharan, a former RSS pracharak, hda been a surprise choice for the post of the BJP’s state president in 2015.
During his three-year tenure as state BJP chief, he led the party well and had managed to open an account in the state assembly for the first time.However, he could not rein in the mounting factionalism within the party and in May 2018, he was unceremoniously removed as party president and sent to Mizoram as its governor.
The BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has also expressed its interest in Rajasekharan’s return.
Two weeks ago, when BJP chief Amit Shah visited Palakkad, an RSS delegation had raised the issue of Rajaseskharan’s return with him, party sources said adding there were many such precedents. They also gave the example of former Kerala governor Nikhil Kumar, who resigned in 2014 from his office to contest from Aurangabad in Bihar. A former Delhi police commissioner and DG of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police force, Kumar had however been defeated.
In the 2014 general election, BJP candidate O Rajagopal, a former minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government, had put up a tough fight in Thiruvananthapuram. However, in the tough three-cornered contest, Tharoor had managed to retain the seat with a slender margin of 15,000 votes.
The CPI has already nominated former minister C Divakaran as its candidate from the Thiruvananthapuram seat.