BJP on damage control mode after Kalyan exit

Faced with a new challenge after the exit of party's backward class face Kalyan Singh, the state BJP leadership is busy chalking out an alternative strategy to keep its support base intact ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Faced with a new challenge after the exit of party's backward class face Kalyan Singh, the state BJP leadership is busy chalking out an alternative strategy to keep its support base intact ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

HT Image

The party which had boasted of good support among the Lodhs and Kurmis in the backward castes, thanks to the presence of Kalyan Singh (Lodh) and a good number of Kurmi leaders, is pressing upon its central leadership to woo back the influential cast leaders who had parted ways because of Kalyan Singh in the recent past.

Leaders such as Ram Bux Verma, Ganga Charan Rajput, Chatrapal Singh, Shiv Ganesh Lodhi Hitesh Kumari and Ram Singh who had quit BJP because of their differences with Kalyan Singh, will in all probability return to the party soon as Singh has resigned from the party.

Sources in the state unit said the damage control exercise has been launched on a war-footing with feelers to the influential backwards, specially Lodh leaders, to return to the party fold with promise of party tickets in the coming elections.

Sources said in the elections held after 1999 when Kalyan Singh had quit the party for the first time and floated his Rashtriya Kranti Party, the party had liberally allotted tickets to the Backwards as a result of which RKP could not take a foothold in electoral politics though the BJP too had suffered a dent in their fortunes.

The party plans to promote Raghuwar Dayal Verma a Lodha leader among others like its Kurmi faces Vinay Katiyar, Om Prakash Singh Ram Kumar Verma, Shiv Shankar Patel, Prem Lata Katiyar, sources said.