Dissatisfied BJP Leaders May Quit

HYDERABAD: Unrest among party leaders appears to have taken
root, and spreading in the BJP in the state and if the current goings are any indication, a group of leaders are waiting and watching the direction the party takes under the new leadership of G. Kishan Reddy, who has taken on the mantle of leading the party for the third time.

Just two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to rally his troops in the state with a scathing attack on the BRS party, and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, a senior BJP leader said he and some of his party colleagues, former MPs and MLAs, are “seriously thinking about the wisdom of continuing in the party”, which according to the leader  has become like the proverbial hare in the ‘Hare and the Tortoise’ fable.

“We started off like the hare and now have lost our way and the Congress, which has been plodding along like the tortoise, has now overtaken us,” the leader said.

Admitting that some BJP leaders from the former Mahbubnagar and
Adilabad districts, along with a few more from other districts are in “touch with each other daily,” the leader said  “the BJP’s bubble first burst after the Munugode by-election loss. The bigger burst of the bubble came after Congress’ win in Karnataka. The question is whether we want to continue in the BJP or not. The question is why  some leaders are thinking on these lines.”

Conversations with some of the party leaders indicate that the dissatisfaction has deeper roots than what happened in the past few months of leadership struggle. Those thinking of their next move are pitching their reasoning as not one of their individual aspirations but more of a state leadership failure, which they claim has been self-centred, a top-down approach from the party high command that issues directions to implement programme after programme which has “run the cadre ragged,” and Union Ministers coming for visits with no clue about the ground reality.

“We do not have winning prospects in more than 30 Assembly constituencies, and the few workers are exhausted. There is definitely unrest, and right now, this group is on a 'which is the right time to go, and where to go’ mode,” the party leader said.