Rajnath on back foot

NEW DELHI: At a time when the BJP workers, assembled in thousands in and around the party headquarters at Khanpur in Ahmedabad on Sunday afternoon, were celebrating their party’s emphatic victory in the assembly polls, the airing of anti-Rajnath Singh slogans confounded party leaders and political observers. It, however, captured the dominant mood within the BJP’s Gujarat unit that Mr Singh had willy-nilly played into the hands of the rebels by trying to sabotage the party’s prospects.

The suspicion that the BJP president had been working to undermine Mr Modi’s position gained currency after the latter was unceremoniously removed from the party’s central parliamentary board, which was re-constituted earlier this year. Faced with a barrage of criticism, Mr Rajnath Singh later took refuge behind the RSS, contending that the move had its blessings.

The perception gained strength during the run-up to the assembly polls. A large number of anti-Modi stories appearing in a section of the media were found to have originated from the BJP president’s office in the Capital. The state brass, in fact, cite the case of the appeals issued by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the voters of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

While the HP appeal endorsed Mr Prem Kumar Dhumal’s leadership, Mr Modi’s name was found to be missing from the pamphlet issued by the BJP central office, conveying the impression that Mr Vajpayee had refused to back the Gujarat chief minister. It was later discovered that party’s media-team in the Capital was behind this concocted story.