A day after resigning from his post, BJP Bihar chief C.P. Thakur on Saturday indicated his willingness to continue working as before and flew to Delhi to meet senior central leaders. But the crisis unlocked pent-up resentment against deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi within the BJP.
Dr Thakur, who would leave from Delhi for Nagpur to meet BJP national president Nitin Gadkari there, said in Patna that his decision to resign was “not permanent”. He said he felt frustrated for most decisions, especially those concerning allotment of tickets for the Assembly polls, had been taken by “one leader,” understood to be Mr Modi.
“It (quitting) was not about my son not being given a ticket. It is for the party to decide who gets tickets. But decisions must be taken unanimously, in consultation with all leaders, and not by one leader,” said Dr Thakur. The former Union health minister’s change of mind came about reportedly after constant persuasion by senior central BJP leaders and their promises of sympathetically looking into his grievances over tickets allotted in over 25 constituencies.
In a related development that boosted the morale of BJP leaders in poll-bound Bihar, senior BJP leader and state public health and engineering minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey on Saturday clarified he had no plans for resigning from the party’s six-member Bihar core committee. Mr Chaubey, long considered to be opposed to Mr Modi for the latter’s perceived “over-reliance” on Mr Nitish Kumar, had threatened to resign in protest against the Digha Assembly constituency being handed over to the JD(U) and to show solidarity with Dr Thakur.
“I have not sent my resignation to the party national president... It is a matter of sadness for all of us in the BJP that the Digha seat was allotted to the JD(U) without consulting me or Dr Thakur,” said Mr Chaubey.
The resignation episode swiftly resurrected anti-Modi sentiments in the BJP and prompted several senior leaders to come out in the open against the deputy chief minister, creating an embarrassing situation for the ruling party as it kicked off its election campaign.
Senior BJP leader and former Union minister Sanjay Paswan said: “Thakur’s resignation was not due to his blind love for his son; it was for Modi’s blind love for Nitish Kumar”. Former vice-president of the BJP’s Bihar unit, Mr Gopal Narayan Singh, said: “The BJP in Bihar has become a party locked in the hands of only one leader.”