New Delhi : The Bhartiya Janata Party cancelled its central election committee meeting slated Tuesday evening in the wake of a widespread revolt in the party on the first list of 149 candidates for Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections finalised on Sunday even while gloating over a big catch of 91-year old Congress veteran Narayan Dutt Tiwari joining the party here on Wednesday.
The leadership also decided to wait and watch the alliance materialising between the Congress and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party as it may upset the party’s calculations of gaining from division of the opposition votes.
The Uttar Pradesh leaders and their supporters protested at the BJP headquarters here on the ticket given to at least two dozen defectors and another dozen close relations of top party leaders.
There was a similar revolt in Uttarakhand as the party gave ticket to almost all Congress rebels who brought down the Congress government but for the Supreme Court restoring it. Alike Uttar Pradesh, the ticket were also given to the kins of the senior leaders. The party has declared candidates for 64 seats in the 70-member state assembly.
Brushing aside the protests, an office-bearer close to BJP President Amit Shah said such anger is natural when someone does not get the ticket. He, however, ruled out anybody walking out of the party.
He claimed the BJP is going to win everywhere and that is why leaders of various parties are flocking to it in the hope of the ticket that the party cannot reject.
The latest entry to boost the morales in the BJP on Wednesday was that of Narayan Dutt Tiwari, who has been the chief minister of both Uttar Pradesh thrice and Utarakhand once.
Tiwari walked into Amit Shah’s residence Wednesday morning and joined the party, but with a bargain to get the BJP ticket for his lawyer son Rohit Shekhar Sharma from Bhimtal in Nainital district of Uttarakhand. Rohit had filed a paternity suit in 2008 claiming Tiwari as his “biological father” and after six years of court battle Tiwari not only accepted him as his son but started living with him in 2014 after a ceremonial marriage with Rohit’s mother Ujjwala Sharma in Lucknow on May 22.
There were demonstrations for the last two days not only in Delhi but also in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, pointing out how the loyalists are being sidelined and those joining the party are immediately rewarded with the ticket, the latest being N D Tiwari’s son.
