New Delhi, (The Telegraph): The BJP's state units may soon be headed only by former Sangh pracharaks (whole-timers), if some recent appointments by Amit Shah are a pointer.
Even Uttar Pradesh, where caste equations often trumped a nominee's Sangh antecedents, may get a hard-core pracharak as its state BJP president. Poll-bound Bengal saw pracharak Dilip Ghosh named as its BJP chief last month.
"This isn't new. (Narendra) Modiji was a pracharak. When pracharaks can become Prime Ministers and chief ministers, why not a state party chief?" Ghosh said.
He said a party chief's primary job was to "create an infrastructure" by organising the workers, allocating tasks, "putting the right person in the right place" and so on. "Other things, like building up an electoral ambience and coining slogans, come later."
Kerala, which too goes to the polls next summer, also has a pracharak as its state BJP president. The Kerala unit sees Kummanam Rajasekharan as a "mirror image" of the late Kuruvannil Govindan Marar, a Sangh veteran who went on to become the state BJP secretary.
A Kerala BJP official said that when Marar died in 1995, he left behind just four sets of shirts and a mundu. "That's the kind of exemplary simplicity we see in Rajasekharan."
In Uttarakhand, Shah has picked Ajay Bhatt, anchored in the Sangh, to try and shepherd the faction-ridden unit to victory in the 2017 polls. Bhatt, now the Opposition leader in the Assembly, was never a pracharak.
"He is a dedicated swayamsevak (volunteer). He was twice our general secretary, so his commitment to our ideology and his organisational skills are indisputable," state BJP vice-president Kedar Joshi said.
Uttar Pradesh, which votes in early 2017, provides a challenge, though.
"It's a hard balancing act," a central BJP official conceded. "There are times we think a traditional pracharak is ideal to hold the cliques together. On the other hand, we did well in the (2014) Lok Sabha polls because we got the caste arithmetic right."
"Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra would want their people at the helm because it will give them a bigger say in choosing poll candidates," a source said. Shah has called a meeting of the Uttar Pradesh leaders in Delhi around January 6 to pick a nominee.
In Gujarat, sources said, Sangh provenance would command a "higher rating" than caste. The Sangh is said to be keen on Bhikhu Dalsania and Mansukh L. Mandaviya. Dalsania is an organisational secretary in the state BJP and its chief conduit with the Sangh. Mandaviya, a Rajya Sabha MP, is deemed a Modi favourite.
