New Delhi: Ticket troubles in the BJP intensified on Friday with a key ally, Shiv Sena, threatening to field candidates against it in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi. Heartburn and dissension hit the party in Rajasthan after the leadership denied a ticket from Barmer to senior leader and former Union minister Jaswant Singh, considered close to patriarch L.K. Advani.
In Bihar, two factions clashed as the candidate from the Patna Saheb Lok Sabha seat, Mr Shatrughan Sinha, went to file his nomination on Friday morning.
There was speculation earlier in the day that the clash was between the supporters of Mr Sinha and those of Ravi Shankar Prasad, who too was demanding a ticket from the same constituency. By Friday evening, though, the BJP claimed that “workers from a local organisation — Lokhit Vichaar Manch — had targeted Mr Sinha’s supporters.”
The Shiv Sena, which continues to be upset with the BJP after the saffron camp’s covert efforts for an electoral understanding with Raj Thackery’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, has threatened to field candidates in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi.
In UP, though, the Sena has also made it clear that it will not field candidates against either BJP president Rajnath Singh or the party’s PM candidate Narendra Modi.
In Rajasthan, the BJP’s policy of marginalising the old guard continued, with its latest victim after L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi being 76-year-old Jaswant Singh. After a fuming Mr Singh threatened to contest as an Independent candidate from Barmer, speculation was rife that chief minister Vasundhara Raje had offered an olive branch by assuring a berth for his son, Manvendra Singh, in her Cabinet. Mr Jaswant Singh was rejected for Barmer in order to give the ticket to a defector from the Congress, Col. Sona Ram Choudhary.
