BJP, the ‘disciplined’ party that boasts of its legacy as one with a difference had to bear with embarrassment as the rank and file shouted slogans and even burnt the effigy of the leaders at the State party headquarters in Dehradun on Tuesday. Mostly from Doiwala, they vented anger against the party seeking to ‘foist’ someone they dislike as the Mandal president for Doiwala rural areas.
Notably, there are five aspirants for the post- Rajendra Singh Manwal, Deepak Chand, Narendra Negi, Dinesh Sajwan and Rajendra Tadiyal. The first four went for a deal to make the party leaders to select one of them as the Mandal president. They are supposed to be opposed to Rajendra Tadiyal. later, the four wrote to the district election officer to appoint Rajendra Manwal as the new Mandal president for the area.
However, things did not move as they intended. On the contrary, the party leadership is all set to announce the name of Tadiyal as the Mandal head under pressure from the lok Sabha member Ramesh Pokhryal Nishank, they alleged.
To pressure the party leadership, the four leaders and their followers marched into the State BJP headquarters and staged a protest on Tuesday, venting anger against their common foe Tadiyal who, they said, had played a instrumental role in the defeat of the saffron nominee in the Doiwala Assembly by- poll. They submitted a letter addressed to the state BJP president Tirath Singh Rawat that contained the same allegation.
The Assembly by-poll was necessitated after the MP from Haridwar Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had vacated the seat he had held fore the general election 2014. BJP national secretary Trivendra Singh Rawat was locked in a contest against the Congress nominee Hira Singh Bisht. Rawat lost the election with a section of the party’s foot soldiers attributing sabotage to the defeat.The result surprised many as the BJP won the Haridwar lok Sabha seat by over two lakh votes with the Doiwala constituency contributing much to the
landslide margin.