The poor show of the party in the key state elections may give enough reasons for ostracised leaders such as LK Advani, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, Murali Manohar Joshi and Shatrughan Sinha to play a bigger role in reshaping the party’s structure.
Undoubtedly the Bihar election results have dealt a blow to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo. According to political experts, both may face the heat from sidelined leaders in the upcoming election of the party, which will decide the fate of Amit Shah too. The voices against Shah’s continuance as party chief for a second term may now get shriller.
The buzz is that Shah may be sent back to his parent state Gujarat to win the state elections as incumbent Chief Minister Anandiben Patel’s performance has not been up to the mark.
Soon after trends started coming out in favour of the Mahagadbandhan, BJP leaders indulged in a blame game. BJP general secretary P Murlidhar Rao accused former home secretary and BJP MP from Arah RK Singh and actor Shatrughan Sinha of betraying the party. Rao also warned them of tough times ahead.
“The party would be acting against these kinds of people and it should be done, regionally and nationally. On the one hand, the party workers were busy with electoral preparations and on the other hand, these people dented the image of their own party,” Rao said soon after poor performance of the party. The BJP failed to wrest its stronghold Arrah and lost to RJD’s Nawaz Alam by a margin of over 5,000 votes.
“What they have given to the party is best known to them, but the party hasn’t given them anything less. These people have dented the image of the party, which amounts to a betrayal. This is not acceptable to us, we believe that this loss in Bihar has a lot to do with all that criticism,” he added.
Fuelling the row, the disgruntled MP from Patna Sahib, Shatrughan Sinha termed the grand alliance’s victory in Bihar polls as “victory of democracy” and took a swipe at the top party brass, saying the issue of “Bihari versus Bahari” has been settled once and for all. Sinha had embarrassed BJP earlier saying that Arun Jaitley was responsible for turning the party into a three-member “scooter party” in Delhi.