The ruling BJP in poll-bound Bihar faced a major crisis on Friday when its state president, Dr C.P. Thakur, resigned partly in protest against his son being denied a party ticket and largely in frustration for being frequently ignored in the decision-making process for allotment of tickets.
A peeved Thakur sent his resignation to BJP president Nitin Gadkari and said he would not take part in the party’s campaigns for the Assembly polls. Several senior BJP leaders and JD(U) president Sharad Yadav, who visited Mr Thakur’s residence to persuade him to withdraw his resignation, were heckled by hundreds of angry BJP workers gathered there to show solidarity with Mr Thakur.
The development, coming just two weeks before Bihar’s first phase of Assembly polls begins, left most BJP leaders in Bihar nervous and even caused an uneasy flutter in the party’s senior alliance partner, JD(U). The BJP’s plans of starting its poll campaign from Saturday also faced uncertainties as Mr Thakur, a former minister in Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government, remained adamant on his decision.
“There are so many issues (behind the resignation), not a single one. I have raised all these issues several times in the past weeks, even in the core committee meetings, but they were all overlooked. Whoever came to the party from outside was handed a ticket to contest. I was most often not even consulted,” said the usually soft-spoken Mr Thakur to reporters.
The immediate cause behind Thakur’s resignation is said to be the BJP’s denial of a ticket to his son, Vivek Thakur, who had lost the 2005 Assembly polls in Brahmapur constituency in Buxar district and wanted to contest from one of the seats in Patna this time. But the BJP’s decision on Thursday night to hand over one of the two Patna seats to the JD(U) despite a series of recent protests by BJP workers left no scope for junior Thakur, who had met Nitin Gadkari a day ago.
The month-long tussle between the BJP and the JD(U) over the two Patna seats — Digha and Bankipur — ended with the BJP finally conceding Digha to the JD(U), which had been stubbornly insisting on getting this seat. The JD(U) in return gave the Aurai seat in Muzaffarpur district to the BJP, which then announced its sitting MLA Nitin Navin as its candidate in Bankipore. This upset C.P. Thakur as his son is unwilling to contest in Brahmapur again.