NEW DELHI, June 17: The ruling BJP on Friday constituted a 14-member “management team” headed by Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat to manage and co-ordinate with the state units and its NDA allies the coming elections to the President of India.
This comes after the BJP empowered party president J. P. Nadda and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh have started reaching out to political parties to consult on the poll.
BJP general secretaries Vinod Tawde and C.T. Ravi are the co-conveners of the team. Another general secretary, Tarun Chugh, is also part of the team, according to a release issued by the party. Union Ministers G. Kishan Reddy, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Sarbananda Sonowal, Arjun Meghwal and Bharati Pawar are also members of the team.
The other members are BJP’s national vice-president D. K. Aruna, national secretary Rituraj Sinha, national president of women’s wing Vanati Srinivasan, national spokesperson Sambit Patra and Assam unit vice-president Rajdeep Roy.
According to sources, this management team will coordinate with all State units of the BJP and its allies for the presidential election and is also expected to guide its elected voting representatives on the voting process.
Nadda and Singh had earlier reached out to several leaders, including Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, Farooq Abdullah, and will continue with the process. While the party is yet to announce the name of its candidate, sources say that it will happen before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposed trip to Germany scheduled for June 26. The last date of filing nominations is June 29.
With numbers on its side, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is expected to ensure the victory of its candidate in the Presidential election scheduled to be held on July 18 with results to be announced on July 21.
Meanwhile, the Shiv Sena chief and the Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray talking about the presidential poll said on Friday that the people may ask how the Opposition would give a capable prime minister if it cannot field a strong candidate for the upcoming presidential polls, stressing that it needs to take the elections for the next president seriously.
In an editorial in its mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, the party said Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi and National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah, the “regular names that crop up during the presidential polls”, don’t have the personality or heft to make it a tightly-contested battle.
On the other hand, the government is not also likely to come up with a “bright” candidate, the party said, adding that five years back, two-three people shortlisted President Ram Nath Kovind’s name and even this year they are likely to do the same. President Kovind’s term ends on July 24 and an election to find his successor is scheduled to be held on July 18. The process to file nominations for the presidential polls began on Wednesday.
Seventeen opposition parties, including the Congress, DMK, NCP and Samajwadi Party, attended the crucial meeting in Delhi on June 15, convened by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to build a consensus on fielding a joint candidate against the BJP-led NDA in the presidential elections. A second meeting of the opposition parties will be convened by Pawar in Mumbai on June 20 or June 21, sources said.
(Manas Dasgupta)
