BJP names district chiefs

Rajesh N Singh / TNN / Oct 18, 2007, 03:09 IST

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The BJP nominated 56 new district unit chiefs, ignoring the commitment made at the recent national working committee meeting to provide 33 percent posts in the organisational set up to women.

LUCKNOW: The Bharatiya Janata Party, on Tuesday, nominated 56 new district unit chiefs, ignoring the commitment made at the recent national working committee meeting to provide 33 percent posts in the organisational set up to women.
In the list released by the state unit, only three women were nominated to the post of district president. "The process of nominating district chiefs on such a grand scale has happened for the first time," said a senior party leader.
Highly critical of this new phenomenon, he said, "we claim to be a party with a difference where not an individual, but the organisation is considered to be supreme.But the way things have started shaping up, we are more or less treading the path of the Congress party where this is a common practice."
Pleading anonymity, another senior leader said that as a face-saving device, the district units were asked to send in a panel of two or three names for nomination to the post of district president. "As we all know, only those names figured in the panel who had the blessings of leaders who mattered," claimed the leader, adding that groupism with ‘me and my man culture’ is set to further damage the party’s prospects in the next parliamentary polls.

"We talk of internal democracy and if this is it, then God save our party," said a leader agitated at the nomination of district chiefs.
He said that the national leadership had taken a ‘sankalp’ at the national working committee meeting to appoint 33 percent women on organisational posts. But when it actually came to following the consensus decision, the resolution adopted in Bhopal was conveniently overlooked.
"Maybe we talk about it for public consumption because during the last assembly elections, the leadership had promised to field one women candidate from each of the 70 districts. Needless to mention the promise was not kept."

Partymen in general are of the view that the urgency shown in nominating new district president was due to the fact that the two-day state working committee was scheduled from October 27. "The main reason for this latest exercise is that when ‘me and my men’ are occupying the post of district chiefs, there will not be any unpalatable questions during the working committee meeting," said an insider.
On the appointment of new chief of the state youth wing, a senior leader commented, "it took so long to find a replacement of Pankaj Singh and the new incumbent is the one who contested the last assembly election from Ballia and lost his security deposit. Now wait for his methods of mobilising the youth," said the leader.

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