Kerala BJP may get new president soon, crucial meet today

Thiruvananthapuram/Kochi: The Kerala unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may get a new president soon after months of impasse. A meet of national leaders and state office-bearers of the party would be held in Kochi on Tuesday ahead of declaring the new state chief.

The sole agenda for the meet is choosing the state president. No other topic would be taken up at the meeting, party sources said.

The name of the new president would be declared in Delhi.

The post has been lying vacant ever since the last one, P S Sreedharan Pillai, was appointed as the governor of Mizoram on October 25. When Pillai took over as the BJP state president from Kummanam Rajasekharan in 2018, the post had remained orphaned for nearly two months.

National spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao and organisation joint secretary Shivaprakash would lead Tuesday's meet. They would convey the party national leadership's views on the new president. If there is no unanimity on the new party chief, the delegates would be instructed to submit their choice in writing.

After the meeting, the national leaders would concur with the leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the right-wing organisation that is the ideological fountainhead of BJP.

“The RSS wants a purebred as the state chief, someone who was with the RSS right from his formative years and not someone who broke into the BJP through the ABVP,” a leading RSS pracharak had earlier said.

BJP leaders in Kerala said that the new party president would attend Union Home Minister Amit Shah's rally to be held in the state in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The rally is likely to be held after January 15.

It is widely believed the appointment of the new chief has been delayed primarily due to factionalism in the Kerala unit. Two prominent groups in the party have been pitching for their own candidates for the post; the V Muraleedharan faction backs K Surendran and the PK Krishnadas faction is all for M T Ramesh.

As reported earlier, the RSS wants Kummanam back in the saddle. For the RSS, Surendran is too callow to take on the responsibility. The RSS is not impressed by Surendran's supposed Sabarimala heroics. The Sangh is of the opinion that Surendran's protests inside the shrine had pushed the situation to near-anarchy.

Also, the RSS has still not been able to forgive the Muraleedharan camp for what its leaders term the “backstabbing” of Kummanan. Kummanam was packed off most unceremoniously to Mizoram in the middle of the Chengannur byelection campaign. The RSS wants Kummanam back as reparation for an earlier wrong. It looks certain that the RSS will not give in to the demand of the Muraleedharan faction.