The Hindu : Front Page : RSS plans to clip wings of BJP’s ‘Delhi 4’

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 18, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Front Page

Front Page

RSS plans to clip wings of BJP’s ‘Delhi 4’

Neena Vyas

Keen to separate functions of BJP parliamentary wing and central organisation

Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is believed to have thought up a plan that would bring about a separation in the functioning of the BJP parliamentary wing and its central party organisation to prevent one encroaching upon the rights of the other.

While the parliamentary wing will work through its own parliamentary party executive and take decisions relevant to parliamentary strategy and day-to-day functioning with the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha in the chair, decisions about the functioning of the State units and central party programmes will be taken by the team of central party office-bearers with the party president in the chair.

M. Venkaiah Naidu

It seems that one of the problems that the RSS has diagnosed as responsible for the party’s recent poor health is that the parliamentary party leader, L.K. Advani specifically, had been trying to encroach upon the decision-making powers of the party president, in this instance Rajnath Singh. This was found to be the reason for the couple of months taken by the former Rajasthan Chief Minister, Vasundhara Raje, to resign from the position of Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly. This was also found to be a factor in the two-week Karnataka crisis — two parts of the BJP were pulling in different directions.

With Maharashtra State party president Nitin Gadkari being the favourite to take charge from Mr. Singh, efforts are also on to ensure that he is not frustrated or stymied by the seemingly well-entrenched and more powerful ‘Delhi 4’ leaders — Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar — who were kept out of the race for the top job by the RSS. The plan seems to be to keep them busy with parliamentary affairs.

Coordination panel

The first signal came on Tuesday. Mr. Jaitley and Ms. Swaraj left for Bangalore after a parliamentary party meeting to help set up the coordination committee for the Karnataka government that was part of the compromise formula that was worked out among the BJP leadership, Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and the Reddy brothers of Bellary to buy peace. Even before the two left for Bangalore, Mr. Singh constituted a 14-member coordination committee including the Chief Minister and one of the Bellary brothers, G. Karunakara Reddy.

Sushma Swaraj

The committee includes State party president Sadanand Gowda; the former Speaker, Jagadish Shettar, who was projected by the Reddys as replacement for Mr. Yeddyurappa; a senior Minister V.S. Acharya; and party general secretary and senior party MP from the State Ananth Kumar. There was no word what role, if any, Ms. Swaraj would have although at the time of the crisis it was said that she would chair such a coordination committee.

Ananth Kumar

Separately, Mr. Singh told journalists that he would consult party colleagues and decide when to quit his post. Those close to him are saying that in any case he would not like to continue beyond his three-year tenure even for a day — he was elected on November 26, 2006 and his tenure began from December 24, 2006 when the National Council approved it, as is required under the party constitution.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page