Thiruvananthapuram, March 26 Two days after former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar took over as the BJP's new Kerala unit president, the first issue for him to confront surfaced on Wednesday - a poster campaign against the party's former Thiruvananthapuram district President V.V. Rajesh.
Numerous posters were pasted in and around the state BJP office in the state capital city and in front of Rajesh’s home, demanding that an Enforcement Directorate probe should be launched into his financial details over the past one decade.
They also alleged that the main reason why Chandrasekhar went down to three-time Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha during the 2024 Parliamentary elections was the foul play enacted by Rajesh, who took money from the Congress leaders to ensure that Chandrasekhar didn’t win.
Chandrasekhar reacted by saying that if this has been done by BJP workers, then strict action will be taken.
Meanwhile, Rajesh has approached the police to find out those behind this smear poster campaign.
The state unit of the BJP is deeply faction-ridden, and the choice of Chandrasekhar as the next state chief, in itself, has been the game plan of the national leadership of the party, which, for long, has been warning the various sides.
Rajesh belongs to the faction headed by the previous state President K. Surendran, which has the blessings of the former Union Minister V. Muraleedharan.
Incidentally, when the name of the then Union Minister Chandrasekhar was announced for the 2024 Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat, it created quite a stir as several local leaders, attached to the different factions of the party, were eyeing the seat.
Though Chandrasekhar, with no roots in Thiruvananthapuram, was able to make inroads very quickly through a professionally managed election campaign which he directly supervised himself, he was well aware of the deep-rooted factionalism prevailing in the party.
At one point in time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chairing a party meeting, spoke tough against the factionalism in the state unit - and the latest poster war clearly signals that Chandrasekhar will have a tough road in the time ahead.
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