Three senior members of the Tamil Nadu BJP have come out in the open, demanding the immediate revamp of the State unit of the party and recall of national secretary P Muralidhar Rao from the State.
The demand is the fallout of claims made by Rao, who is in charge of the Tamil Nadu BJP.
While speaking to reporters at Pazhani on Friday, Rao had blamed the well-wishers of the BJP for favouring the DMK and the AIADMK in the recently held Assembly elections. “In a multi-cornered contest, BJP’s well-wishers favoured one or the other Dravidian party. But we garnered sizable votes. Our performance in Madurai, Coimbatore and Chennai was very impressive. The BJP’s performance was extraordinary in Chennai,” Rao had told mediapersons.
“The BJP failed to win a single seat in the State. The only commendable performance by the BJP candidates were at Killiyoor, Nagercoil and Vilavancode in the South, where the party candidates finished second . In rest of the constituencies it was a wash out. Rao is trying to spread falsehood,” said Uma Anadan, a senior BJP activist for the last three decades.
T S Sankaranarayanan, Madurai-based former leader of the BJP said the party fared poorly in all the places mentioned by Rao. “He does not have any idea about the Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP. In Chennai, the party candidates, including State president Tamilissai Sounderarajan, bite the dust to greenhorns fielded by the AIADMK and the DMK. In all the constituencies in Chennai, the BJP candidates finished in a poor third or fourth places,” said Sankaranarayanan, who claims he has requested the party's national president to revamp the party structure in the State.
Uma Anandan expressed shock over the restructuring of the State office bearers executed by Sounderarajan recently. “All the failed candidates and office bearers who have proved beyond doubt that they are incapable, have been promoted and given important positions,” she said.
She pointed out how K Nagarajan, a loyalist of Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan, was rewarded, though he fared poorly at Mylapore, a BJP stronghold in Chennai.
“Nagarajan finished third and lost his deposit in spite of facing weak candidates fielded by the AIADMK and the Congress. This is the constituency from where l Ganeshan scored maximum votes in the 2014 lok Sabha election. Nagaraj could manage just 11,000 votes here,” pointed out T Balasubramania Adityan, another senior activist.
All the three leaders made it clear that they were not interested in getting any official positions in the party. “We are worried over the day-by-day destruction of the Tamil Nadu BJP because of the incapable State leaders. If the central leaders fail to give a shock treatment to the BJP in Tamil Nadu, chances of the party winning even a single seat in the 2019 lok Sabha election look quite bleak,” all three said in unison.
A senior leader of Tamil Nadu BJP said that the internal fighting between the Pon Radhakrishnan and Sounderarajan groups has weakened the party and this resulted in the total wash out of the party in the 2016 Assembly election. “We should have a new team, a mixture of young and experienced , in place as we are getting ready for the 2019 lok Sabha election. The present team is incapable of doing anything worthwhile for the BJP,” said the leader.