With several of its leaders aspiring to be projected as the chief ministerial candidate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bihar may not name anyone for the post ahead of the polls.
The Assembly election in the State is due only in October-November 2015. But jostling for the top job has already begun in the party, as chances of the ruling JD(U) calling an early election cannot be ruled out.
Former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi is the frontrunner for the post, but he is now facing internal dissent, particularly after the party won only four of the 10 Assembly seats where by-polls were held recently.
One way of dealing with the conflicting demands of a wide range of leaders in the State unit is to opt for “collective leadership,” something the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), ideological mentor of the BJP, appears to favour. In a departure from the past, the BJP will not declare the CM candidate in Haryana and Maharashtra, where elections have been announced.
This is likely to be the case in neighbouring Jharkhand too.
BJP president Amit Shah, during his recent visit to Jharkhand, had discussed the developments in the Bihar BJP with top RSS leaders of the region. Mr. Shah had then expressed his displeasure at the brewing discontent.
Sources in the local unit of the Sangh, though, admitted that the organisation had “not got the right feedback” about chief ministerial ambitions of some BJP leaders.
Earlier, a poster declaring Sushil Modi as the future Chief Minister had sprung up in the State capital. Union Agriculture Minister and party MP from Bihar, Radha Mohan Singh, too had said Sushil Kumar Modi must lead the party in the upcoming Assembly election.
The developments fuelled discontent among the party leaders such as Prem Kumar, Satyadeo Arya, Chandramohan Rai, Dr. C.P. Thakur, Rameshwar Chaurasia, Harendra Pratap and others. “If the party wants to repeat its Lok Sabha performance in the State Assembly election too, it should go ahead with collective leadership,” Mr. Chaurasia told The Hindu . The others too echoed his view.
Another party leader having close links with the RSS, Harendra Pratap, said the “party now needs to do serious introspection on the question of its leadership.”
