Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 2: Ahead of declaring its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections on Saturday, the BJP apparently has given an opportunity to the dropped leaders to announce their honourable exits to avoid a public embarrassment.
In Indian politics, where there is intense competition for ticket from any party that has even a remote chance of winning, sitting BJP MPs declaring that they do not want to contest again is almost unthinkable unless they had personal problems to contest.
Particularly when the general public perception is that the BJP is almost certain to retain power, two BJP MPs said – within hours of each other – on Saturday that they would like to be “relieved” of their political duties, it took many by surprise. The two MPs who “offered” to quit were the cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir and the son of the former BJP-turned-Trinamool Congress leader Jayant Sinha. His father Yashwant Sinha was the finance minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government but a known critic of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a post on X around 10 am today, Gautam Gambhir, the BJP MP from East Delhi, said, “I have requested Hon’ble Party President @JPNadda ji to relieve me of my political duties so that I can focus on my upcoming cricket commitments.”
Less than five hours later, Jayant Sinha, who represents Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh in the Lok Sabha, made a nearly identical post. “I have requested Hon’ble Party President Shri @JPNadda
ji to relieve me of my direct electoral duties so that I can focus my efforts on combating global climate change in Bharat and around the world,” he posted on X. Both leaders also thanked the party’s leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, for the opportunities provided to them. Gautam Gambhir was a first-time MP, but Jayant Sinha had been elected from Hazaribagh twice in a row.
The party sources said the well-oiled election machinery of the BJP, which has conducted extensive surveys and held long deliberations on every Lok Sabha seat, had already decided not to repeat Gautam Gambhir and Jayant Sinha. Sources indicated that both Gambhir and Sinha were not very popular in their constituencies and the BJP, which has set itself a target of winning a mammoth 370 seats, had decided not to repeat them.
“In Delhi, where the party had won all seven Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the party is looking for new faces,” the sources said. The decision followed a lengthy, detailed process, which included getting feedback from the people in every constituency, conducting internal evaluations, and hiring survey agencies to file comprehensive reports. These were followed by deliberations by the state leadership and the national brass.
Sources said the national leadership had made it clear that the MPs whose performance was not up to the mark would not be repeated and that at least 60 incumbent MPs could face this fate.
On Thursday night, a five-hour meeting had been held in New Delhi, which was chaired by Mr Modi and attended by Mr Shah and Mr Nadda, among others. The meeting, which began at 11 pm and ended at 4 am, had also focused on constituencies that the party hadn’t done well in. The idea was to announce the names of the candidates even before the poll dates are out, so that they get enough time to reach out to the voters in their respective candidates.