BJP to declare Aruvikkara bypoll candidate today
“BJP has 22, 000 membership in the constituency we can put up a good fight there” said BJP leader
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-05-31 06:08 GMT
Kochi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is slated to announce its candidate for Aruvikkara after a core committee meeting on Sunday. BJP leaders were huddled with the state RSS leaders in Ernakulam today. Though there were reports earlier that chances of BJP national executive member Sobha Surendran would brighten if former Speaker G. Karthikeyan’s widow Dr M. T. Sulekha was fielded.
Since their son K. S. Sabarinathan is the UDF candidate now, the probable candidates are state secretary V. Sivankutty, spokesperson V. V. Rajesh and Thiruvananthapuram district secretary S. Suresh. A senior party leader told DC that sometimes other names would also be considered.
The high level meeting to be held at Mararji Bhavan in the morning will be attended by state president V. Muraleedharan, his predecessors O. Rajagopal, P. S. Sreedharan Pillai, P. K. Krishnadas, C. K. Padmanabhan and K. V. Sreedharan Master, vice-president M. T. Ramesh and general secretaries A. N. Radhakrishnan, K. P. Sreesan, K. R. Umakanthan, K. Subhash and K. Surendran.
These same leaders also attended the meeting with the RSS leadership. Meanwhile, the national leadership is peeved at the delay in finding an appropriate candidate even after rival candidates started active campaigning.
National president Amit Shah, when he came here on May 18 to inaugurate the protest on the UDF government’s fourth anniversary, had asked the state leaders to put up a strong fight. “Since the BJP has 22, 000 membership in the constituency we can put up a good fight there. But we are way behind LDF and UDF now,” said another BJP leader.