BJP to pick Delhi unit chief this month; sprinting Sachdeva presents Punjabi option
By Our Special Correspondent
New Delhi, January 2: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to pick its full time chief of the Delhi unit. The BJP had appointed Virendra Sachdeva as the working president after Adesh Gupta was sacked following the defeat of the party in the elections for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) at the hands of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Gupta had another six months left in his tenure, and he was asked to quit following adverse feedback that the BJP workers in the city didn’t see him rallying the cadre against the ruling AAP. The BJP had given the charge to Sachdeva as the working president until a new chief was found.
“The BJP will appoint a full-fledged chief of the Delhi unit this month. The party has to make a call whether the BJP will show confidence in a Punjabi face or again experiment with a Poorvanchali,” said a senior BJP functionary.
Within a few days in the office, Sachdeva has sprinted to action, rallying the party workers with his outreach, and making surprise inspections of the public utilities to turn the spotlight on the ruling AAP. Delhi BJP leaders said that Sachdeva has brought energy that was missing in the tenuer of Gupta, “who was besieged with his personal aides”. Sachdeva is a Punjabi face of the BJP, and he was previously vice president of the city unit.
Delhi BJP leaders claimed that the MCD verdict exposed the tall claims of some of the Lok Sabha MPs who were nursing aspirations in the city politics. “Parvesh Verma, who was being propped up earlier by the high command, came a cropper, as the party fared badly in his constituency, and so was the case with Meenakshi Lekhi,” said a senior BJP functionary.
Incidentally, the BJP fared well in the trans-Yamuna parts of Delhi in the MCD elections. But the local party leaders credited the success in trans-Yamuna to the cadre and the polarization factor, adding that “Manoj Tiwari and Gautam Gambhi were not at all instrumental in the wins of the party candidates”.
While the BJP in Delhi has experimented with Baniya (Adesh Gupta, Vijendra Gupta and others), Tiwari was the poorvanchali face of the BJP, who also could not stop the rise of the AAP in the national capital. The city leaders of the BJP also maintained that the party lost heavily in the outer parts of the national capital.
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