Thiruvananthapuram: The BJP core committee has appointed a three member subcommittee to zero in on candidates chosen right from mandalam committee presidents onwards. BJP national president Amit Shah has asked state leadership to come up with candidature as desired by the party workers and not raised by the leadership. Senior core committee leaders O. Rajagopal MLA, P. K. Krishnadas and C. K. Padmanabhan are the members in the sub-committee.
Earlier BJP state president P. S. Sreedharan Pillai had come under the wrath after he unilaterally gave a candidature list without discussing it in party forums. This led the central leadership to act and asked the core committee meeting which was held at Kochi two weeks ago to form a three member subcommittee. Accordingly, former state president Krishnadas kicked off his marathon one-to-one meeting with mandalam presidents on Sunday at Kochi. He will be meeting the mandalam presidents and other local level leaders in six constituencies, Palakkad, Alathur, Thris-sur, Chalakudy, Ernakul-am and Kottayam. The other two former State presidents Rajagopal and CKP will kick start their duties on Monday.
“The subcommittee me-mbers will also be asking the mandalam presidents and local leaders to share freely about the Lok Sab-ha elections and make the candidature in a tra-nsparent and democratic way”, a BJP leader said.
A section of the BJP leaders feel that this exercise should have been done early. However, they were asked to concentrate on the other party programmes, mainly the Kamal Sandesh cycle rally which was held on March 2.
A senior BJP leader told DC that the central leadership was keen to see that the three member subcommittee plunge in to candidature talks only after the Kamal Sandesh cycle rally lest they go lax in taking across the BJP’s propaganda before the masses.
