But the possibility of the party president belonging to a northeastern state is not being ruled out.
NEW DELHI: With Delhi elections and Holi out of the way, the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president is likely to be announced by April first week.
According to party sources and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) functionaries, with the language and the delimitation controversy coming into existence all of a sudden just when the announcement of the new party president is days away, it should not come as a surprise if the top leadership in the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, select a party leader from the Southern state.
The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led MK Stalin government in Tamil Nadu has been alleging that the NDA government in the Centre wants to impose Hindi language in Tamil Nadu and the Southern states of India.
On March 5, Stalin chaired an all-party meeting of 58 political parties in Chennai and passed a three-point resolution to take steps to ensure that the parliamentary representation of the Southern states is not reduced in the next delimitation due to the state’s relatively lower population than other states.
Apart from these two new developments, the fact the BJP has been working steadily to establish itself as a major political entity in the South is no secret, and therefore, a section of the party leaders, for long now, have been arguing that this is the right time to have a national president from one of the South states.
The names from the South that have been suggested to media by party leaders, in the last month, if Modi and Shah decided to look to make someone from the South include – Andhra BJP chief Daggubati Purandeshwari, BJP Mahila Morcha national president and Coimbatore MLA Vanathi Srinivasan, BJP OBC Morcha National President Dr. K. Laxman, Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy (both from Telangana) and Union Minister Pralhad Joshi.
However, if someone from the South is made the national president, this will not be the first such exercise.
The Hyderabad-born Bangaru Laxman has served as party national president when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister during 2000-2001. He was prematurely removed after just one year as he was caught taking bribes in front of a hidden camera. Apart from these names, Union Ministers Bhupender Yadav, Dharmendra Yadav, Manohar Lal Khattar, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, and party functionary Vinod Tawde are among those whose names have been floated as potential replacements for the incumbent Jagat Prakash Nadda over the past year. However, if the party leadership feels that the recent issues involving South India’s issues are not something that should affect the steady course it has been moving on, BJP’s new president will be from a North-Eastern state, which as reported by The Sunday Guardian earlier, would be a historic step in multiple ways.