A QUESTION OF LEADERSHIP

Rajasthan is on the BJP's mind. That's clear enough from the way the high command is itself taking charge of matters in the poll-bound state.

- Rohit Parihar

But even the flurry of organisational steps it has announced leave untouched a certain vacuum at the heart of its strategy: the question of leadership. While circling indecisively around that, the party is doing everything it can to prevent Congress chief minister Ashok Gehlot from winning a nearly unprecedented re-election later this year. On July 16, BJP president J.P. Nadda addressed a workers' rally in Jaipur, his second in less than three weeks. Within that same duration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP national general secretary B.L. Santhosh touched base in Bikaner, Udaipur and Sawai Madhopur respectively for public and party events.

The avoidance of the leadership question shows in how the party is falling back on its organisational matrix. Though many attribute the BJP's loss in Karnataka to Santhosh's strategy, it hasn't stopped the high command from placing him at the forefront in Rajasthan. Union parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi, another organisation man, has been made state election in-charge. Former Gujarat deputy chief minister Nitin Patel, who'll have a hotline to Shah, is a co-in-charge; so is Kuldeep Bishnoi, the son of late Haryana CM Bhajan Lal who only joined the BJP last year but whose caste base has an overlap with Rajasthan. Also, Rajya Sabha MP Kirodi Lal Meena has been included in the national working committee along with deputy leader of the Opposition Satish Poonia, the man C.P. Joshi replaced as state chief.