Feud in Bihar BJP reaches Delhi

Patna: The fissures in Bihar BJP over constitution of new working committee by state president Mangal Pandey have widened with a section of disgruntled leaders led by former chief C P Thakur taking their fight to Delhi seeking intervention by the central leadership. Thakur told PTI that veteran BJP leader and former state legislative council chairman Tarakant Jha met BJP national president Rajnath Singh in New Delhi yesterday and apprised him about "discrepancies" in constitution of the working committee by his successor.

"Jha conveyed to the BJP president about discontent among party leaders and workers over unilateral manner of constitution of the new team by Pandey from which several senior ministers and other prominent leaders have been deliberately excluded," the former state unit president said. Thakur said that he and the Public Health and Engineering Department (PHED) minister Chandra Mohan Rai will go to New Delhi soon and meet the central teams to apprise them about anomalies in the new working committee. Rai had also joined the former state unit chief in publicly questioning the constitution of the new team by Pandey, said to be a close aide of the Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi. Several other disgruntled leaders too will go to Delhi on their own volition to speak to the central leaders on the issue, Thakur said. While Modi himself has maintained stoic silence over rebellion brewing in the rank and file over selection of the new team, Pandey refuted Thakur`s charge of unilateral selection of the working committee and said that he had discussed the matter with the central leadership in detail. "I visited Delhi after election as the state unit chief and discussed in detail with the central leaders about credentials of all those people included in the working committee," he said. PTI