New Delhi: The BJP on Monday projected former IPS officer Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate in Delhi, making a strong bid to address the leadership issue in the faction ridden state unit even at the cost of taking a detour from its electoral strategy of going to poll without a face in recent assembly elections. The announcement was made late Monday night at a press conference addressed by party president Amit Shah.
A decision to this effect was taken at BJP’s parliamentary board meeting in New Delhi. A separate meeting of the BJP’s central election committee also finalised name of candidate of all 70 constituencies.
This is perhaps the first occasion in the BJP that an individual has been projected as CM candidate within days of joining the party. “The decision to project her as the CM candidate is part of our electoral strategy. We have contested some election under someone’s leadership and without a face in some others,” BJP chief Amit Shah told reporters at party headquarters.
Bedi will contest from Krishna Nagar, the erstwhile constituency of union minister Harsh Vardhan who was party’s CM candidate in the last election. This, BJP sources say, was also to project a united face of the party. “The entire party is united. There is no dispute,” Shah replied on the reported heart burns over Bedi’s projection.
Party sources said that members of the Parliamentary Board realised that Delhi polls were different from recent assembly polls in four states – where the contest was not only multi-cornered but also benefited from the anti incumbency against the sitting governments. Delhi has been under president’s rule since February and some BJP seniors argued that former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal may use this to blame the BJP-led central government for problems confronting national capital.
“We needed a strong face to counter Kejriwal. The available talent in Delhi BJP was not good enough to capitalise on the goodwill of the Narendra Modi government,” a senior BJP leader told HT after the parliamentary board meeting.
Also, some leaders in the party were in favour of revisit the strategy to pit the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, against Kejriwal – which certainly came with the risk of critics using any poor show as referendum on the central government. While Modi will continue to aggressively campaign in Delhi, Bedi’s presence in the middle of the battle insulate the PM from any such risk.
