Mumbai, June 03: The top brass of the Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to revert to its favourite theme, chanting the mantra ‘suraj’ (good governance) that was coined almost a decade ago.
The state unit of the party is busy playing the host, meticulously planning the two-day national convention at Bhayandar on June 5-6. Interestingly, the star of the conclave will be Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and not BJP president Nitin Gadkari. Chief ministers of six BJP-ruled states — Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Chhatisgarh — will attend the session.
In Bihar and Punjab, where the BJP is a junior coalition partner, there will be deputy chief ministers or senior cabinet ministers attending the session.
Highly-placed sources in the party revealed, “When it comes to portraying the face of good governance, who better than Modi to do the needful. Whether it is electoral politics or administration, Modi has already created a hat-trick in the state. We look up to him to guide others in the organisation.”
A political manager in the BJP said, “The idea of engaging in serious discussions on good governance was the brainchild of party president Nitin Gadkari. It is also a part of the organisation’s ongoing exercise to set the house in order on all fronts.”
Whether it was by design or coincidence the BJP’s decision to hold the conclave comes close to the national debate about poor performance of the UPA government in Delhi. The Congress-led coalition completed one year on May 22.
After the poor showing of the BJP in the 2009 parliament and state elections, there is a serious attempt to rebuild the organisation. The Congress consolidation at the Centre and grooming of youth leader Rahul Gandhi has got the BJP a little worried. The party which had reposed faith in Gadkari’s leaders propping him up as a development man, has now accepted it is not working among the masses.
A senior central leader of the BJP said, “It would have been better if we had projected Gadkari as a BJP general secretary and gradually elevated him to the all India president post.” Now, the onus of carrying forward the challenges rest on the collective leadership including Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha who are going to deliver key lectures.
–Agencies–