The Bharatiya Janata Party, generally considered a disciplined party unlike the RJD and the JD(U) in Bihar, on Friday witnessed large-scale vandalism at its state headquarters when over a thousand angry workers protested against allocation of party tickets by breaking office furniture.
Coming from two Assembly constituencies — Begusarai and Bachhwara — the BJP workers shouted slogans alleging that the party’s leadership “sold” the tickets for the two seats to “unworthy people” with little proven dedication for the party and the people.
The angry workers, many of them having come with food and bedclothes to sit in indefinite demonstrations, broke furniture in the chambers of general secretaries Janardan Singh Sigriwal and Mangal Pandey.
Denial of ticket to the BJP’s sitting MLA from Begusarai, Srikrishna Singh, had angered the workers from that constituency, who alleged that Surendra Mehta, who has got the ticket, had an unclean public image and that his caste, Koiree, would work against him because Begusarai has a Bhumihar-dominated electorate.
But senior leaders, when contacted, pointed that the delimitation exercise had tilted the caste balances in Begusarai against Srikrishna Singh, a Bhumihar who had won the Assembly bypoll in 2009.