THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A senior BJP leader has vehemently denied reports that the party’s state president Kummanam Rajasekharan had come under fire from core committee leaders. The BJP core committee and state office bearers met at Palakkad on Tuesday. The second day’s meeting will come out with a political resolution on Wednesday. After a national executive and council meeting, the respective state leaderships go into a huddle in a two-day session. The recently concluded national executive and council meetings took place at Bhubaneswar in Odisha. Much to the disappointment of the state BJP leadership, their candidate in the Malappuram Lok Sabha byelection came a distant third and could garner only 975 votes more than what N. Sreeprakash could in the previous 2014 LS elections.
The two-day meeting also saw central BJP leaders like joint organising secretaries B.L. Santhosh, BJP general secretary in charge of state H. Raja and co-incharge Nalin Kumar Kateel. “None of the core committee leaders in the BJP have the guts to speak against the state BJP leadership in front of central leaders. So, it is all media’s vain idea that Kummanam’s style of functioning had come under criticism,” a BJP leader said. But trouble has been brewing in the BJP over Mr Kummanam’s soft stand on pertinent issues. He told reporters in Palakkad that there were no issues in finalising the candidate for Malappuram.
“Right from Day One the local leadership had recommended Sreeprakash’s candidature. There was no disagreement as reported in the media,” said Mr Kummanam. There were reports that while the candidature was being finalised in Malappuram that BJP general secretary Sobha Surendran’s name was recommended. However, owing to central leadership’s stand that there is no point in fielding a state leader in Malappuram by-election, the noose fell on Mr Sreeprakash. Tuesday’s leadership meeting has decided to hold Parliament constituencies meeting as well as to strengthen the booth committees towards the run-up to the 2019 LS elections.
