Infighting among the senior leaders of the BJP resurfaces with the Assembly elections creeping close. Om Prakash Dhankar, national president of Kisan Morcha BJP, pointed his gun on party’s national spokesperson Capt Abhimanyu on Thursday.
Dhankar alleged that he lost his seat of Rohtak, in lok Sabha elections because of Capt Abhimanyu. He said, “Abhimanyu never paid a visit to Rohtak during the ongoing campaigning for the general elections, which affected the results in an adverse way.”
Dhankar was BJP’s candidate from Rohtak lok-Sabha constituency and he was defeated by sitting MP Deepender Singh Hooda, son of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who was being seen as a strong contender from this area.
According to sources, Capt Abhimanyu, who is considered to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat, was himself interested to contest the lok Sabha elections from Rohtak or Sonepat. All the preparations were in place and the campaigning for Capt Abhimanyu started well before the elections were announced.
However, at the eleventh hour, his name was dropped from the list of candidates for the elections and instead Ramesh Kaushik was fielded from Sonepat and Dhankar was fielded from Rohtak.
BJP faced a rebellion over the choice of candidates in both Rohtak and Sonepat. In Rohtak, the supporters of Naresh Malik, even created a ruckus in-front of the party headquarters in March and donned black flags to protest against the candidature of Dhankar. BJP state-president Ram Bilas Sharma also faced the ire of the supporters during his visit to the party headquarters in March, 2014.
As the Assembly elections are just around the corner, speculations are rife that Captain Abhimanyu might be the named as the chief ministerial candidate of BJP from Haryana. As the name of Abhimanyu has cropped up, Dhankar has started sharpening his weapons to get an apt revenge.
Meanwhile, Dhankar is considered to be close to former state BJP President Krishan Pal Gujjar, who is currently the Minister of State for road transport & highways and shipping in Modi’s Cabinet. Gujjar has already shown his displeasure over the possible alliance of HJC and BJP in the state for the upcoming assembly elections and is supported by Dhankar. This issue is likely to raise more trouble for both the parties in the State.
On the other hand, Captain Abhimanyu is a staunch supporter of the BJP-HJC alliance since 2011. This has brought two BJP stalwarts face to face creating a logjam situation for the party, with Dhankar fuming over his defeat till date.