Hyderabad: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Nitin Nabin has warned the party’s Telangana leaders that the central leadership will no longer tolerate infighting, cautioning that internal divisions were damaging the party’s image, confusing the cadre and hurting its prospects in the state.
At his first meeting with the state leadership since taking charge as national president, Nabin is learnt to have told the leaders that the central leadership had done everything possible to strengthen the state unit and that there was no room for further complaints or a public airing of differences, The Times of Indiareported quoting sources.
Leaders must either work together or make way for others, he said.
The meeting was attended by Telangana BJP chief N Ramchander Rao, Union Coal Minister G Kishan Reddy, Union Minister of State for Home Bandi Sanjay Kumar, MPs, MLAs and other senior leaders. The party’s Telangana affairs in-charge, Abhay Patil, facilitated the meeting and hosted a lunch for the state leadership ahead of the talks.
The Telangana unit could not afford to remain divided at a time when the BJP was looking to widen its footprint in the state, Nabin told the leaders, according to party sources. Factional rivalries, he is learnt to have said, were sending the wrong signal to workers and weakening the party’s standing among the public.
BRS, Congress to be treated as equal rivals
Outlining the party’s political strategy, Nabin directed the state leadership to go after the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) as aggressively as the ruling Congress, saying both should be treated as the BJP’s principal rivals in Telangana.
He also set electoral targets for the state unit, asking leaders to focus on winning the upcoming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections, other municipal polls and the two pending MLC contests.
Seeking to fire up the leadership, Nabin is learnt to have said the BJP had the organisational strength to form the next government in Telangana. Citing the party’s rise to power in states such as Tripura and Odisha, he stressed that electoral success was within reach if leaders stayed united and worked as a team.
Referring to Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s political rise, he observed that if the Congress could return to power in a short span, the BJP too could do the same, provided its leaders set aside differences and worked to expand the party’s base.
BJP to go it alone in GHMC polls: Ramchander Rao
Telangana BJP chief N Ramchander Rao ruled out any tie-up for the upcoming GHMC elections, asserting that the party would contest the civic polls on its own.
Speaking to reporters after meeting Nabin, Rao said the Jana Sena remained a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) constituent at the national level and any decision on electoral coordination in Telangana would be taken by the BJP’s central leadership. “The BJP will contest the GHMC elections on its own,” he said.
The party would step up its campaign against the Congress government over its alleged failure to deliver on the six guarantees and other public issues, he added.
Rao said there would be no distinction between old BJP hands and recent entrants and claimed that several leaders from other parties were keen to join the BJP.
Expressing confidence about the party’s prospects, he said the BJP was preparing constituency-wise and had identified potential candidates in several segments, adding that it remained committed to forming the next government in the state.
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