No dearth of Kerala president hopefuls in BJP

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With BJP state president  Kummanam Rajasekharan's appointment as Governor of Mizoram, speculations are  rife on his possible successor.  However, the state leaders are in the dark about it though there several hopefuls.  National president Amit Shah will choose a leader who can show results in the next Lok Sabha elections, it is said. "The national leadership is expected to announce the new president on Monday evening after the Chengannur by-election,"  a BJP source told  DC.

Among the prominent aspirants are senior RSS functionary J. Nandakumar,  who is a national convener of Prajna Pravah, BMS national president C. K. Saji Narayanan,  and Swadeshi Jagran Manch national general secretary A. Jayakumar.    The hopefuls among the state BJP leaders include former presidents P. S. Sreedharan Pillai and P. K. Krishnadas and second rung leaders and state general secretaries M. T. Ramesh and K. Surendran.

Former state president C. K. Padmanabhan is out of favour with the central leadership as well as  the RSS. When Mr Kummanam was appointed in December  2015 as the state president, another prominent person  in the race was  R. Balashankar, former editor of RSS mouthpiece, 'Organiser.' On Saturday, Mr Amit Shah had called a press meet at BJP headquarters in New Delhi to list the achievements of the NDA government on its fourth anniversary.

When reporters quizzed him whether Arvind Menon, an RSS pracharak who was the former organising state general secretary in Madhya Pradesh will replace Mr Kummanam, Mr Amit Shah quipped that certain media organisations were trying to plant false news. Palakkad-born Arvind Menon is settled in Madhya Pradesh and is a national co-ordinator in the  BJP central office.