BJP state leaders unhappy with layers upon layers' leadership

HYDERABAD: Several state BJP leaders are upset that the party’s Central leaders deputed to Telangana were causing confusion instead of providing solutions, further muddying the murky waters that the unit finds itself in.

Sources said no one in the state unit knew who to approach — among national general secretaries Sunil Bansal and Tarun Chugh, secretary Arvind Menon and Rajya Sabha member Prakash Javadekar — when it came to solving problems or seeking advice.

Even worse, a party leader said that there was complete confusion on why Javadekar and Bansal were appointed as state election in charge and the co-incharge when it appointed a new president to the Telangana unit.

“No one really knows what they are doing here. Other than telling us what to do, and trying to reassure us that everything is okay, we are not getting anything concrete from them in terms of direction or strategies,” a senior party leader told Deccan Chronicle.

“Kishan Reddy could have been given a free hand. Many are at a loss as to why more people had to be appointed over him. This has sent all kinds of wrong signals, especially at a time when there is a lot of discontent. This makes it seem that the state leadership is toothless, which is leading to further increase in a feeling of helplessness,” another party leader said.

Although some BJP leaders said that the roots of the problem were from the time when Bandi Sanjay Kumar was heading the state unit, rumblings of Sanjay not considering taking other leaders with him went unheeded by the party’s national leadership.

“By removing him as the state president, the party sent a signal that it could be blackmailed, something unheard of in the BJP. By adding layers upon layers of leadership deputed from Delhi, it was understood by most leaders and cadres that the state leadership, no matter who heads it, is incapable of doing anything on its own. This is the worst kind of signal that could have been sent to the party in the run-up to the elections,” a third party leader said.

Meanwhile, the discontent among Sanjay’s followers only appeared to be growing with word doing the rounds that some in the BJP high command openly admitted that it may have erred in removing Sanjay. “The problem is not with Kishan Reddy who replaced Sanjay. We were misled on the Sanjay issue,” a top source in BJP’s Central leadership in Delhi said.