No CM nominee, Modi to be face of BJP in Capital

Vibha Sharma

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Tribune news Service

New Delhi, January 12

To circumvent the problem of its highly-divided house in Delhi with more than half-a-dozen chief ministerial aspirants, the BJP is expected to contest the upcoming February-7 Assembly elections without a CM candidate. In fact, marking a significant shift in strategy from the last two Assembly elections in the capital state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the sole USP, the face of the saffron party here.

Union Minister Harsh Vardhan was its CM candidate in the last elections while the previous one was fought with veteran leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra at the helm of affairs. Sources said the central leadership is of the view that the strategy — keeping Modi at the forefront — has borne significant results in the recent Assembly elections in Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra and partly also in Jammu and Kashmir.

The saffron party is expected to start announcing its Delhi Assembly candidates after Makar Sakranti, the beginning of the auspicious period as per the Hindu calendar. The list was almost ready, the sources said. It seems unlikely that all seven sitting MPs will be fielded for the Assembly elections as the general view within the party is that such a move may sent a wrong message to electorate and its chief ministerial candidates.

While Delhi was considered a stronghold of the BJP under stalwarts like late Madan Lal Khurana and late Sahib Singh Verma at the helm of affairs, the 15 years of the Congress’ rule left it without a strong and credible mass-based leader. But the party is quite upbeat about doing well in the Delhi cantonment board elections, even though it has done quite poorly in similar elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Among the many “front-runners” for top post, include sitting Lok Sabha MPs Harsh Vardhan and Meenakshi Lekhi and Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay. The name of Union Minister Smriti Irani is also doing the rounds along with Jagdish Mukhi, even though he is quite close to the cut-off date of 75 years as mandated by the top leadership in the RSS and BJP. Apart from them, Delhi leaders Vijay Goel, Vijendra Gupta and former mayor Aarti Mehra are also in the race.

Senior party leaders concede to deep rifts between different Delhi factions. “It will be highly impractical to declare a single name and annoy 10 others. In such a situation it is better that no CM candidate is announced. The strategy (to contest with the Prime Minister as the party’s face) paid us rich dividends in states like Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra and should work for Delhi as well,” BJP leaders said.