Blame game in BJP

Sanjeev Singh Bariana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 12

The BJP’s debacle in Punjab has triggered a blame game, with senior state leaders under scrutiny for failing to work as a team and cash in on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mass appeal.

The party will hold a review meeting shortly to discuss the performance of various candidates, including senior leaders, sources said. The two BJP ministers in the fray, Anil Joshi (Amritsar North) and Surjit Kumar Jyani (Fazilka), both lost. Mahinder Bhagat, the son of minister Chunni Lal Bhagat, was defeated as well. Former Chief Parliamentary Secretaries (CPSes) KD Bhandari (Jalandhar North), Sukhjit Kaur (Dasuya) and Seema Kumar (Bhoa), too, crashed to defeat. The only ex-CPS who won was Som Parkash (Phagwara).

Questions are also being raised about the candidature of party national secretary Tarun Chugh, who is also the party incharge for Andaman and Nicobar and co incharge for Delhi. Chugh, a confidant of former state unit president Kamal Sharma, lost his second election in a row.

Top leaders, including Ashwani Sharma (Pathankot) and Manoranjan Kalia (Jalandhar), failed to retain their seats and failed to find any mention in the campaign at the state level.

Party sources said state unit president Vijay Sampla’s opposition to the candidature of Som Parkash and getting the ticket from the Rajpura seat for his loyalist, Harjit Grewal, would also be taken up at the meeting.