Bengaluru: With Assembly polls a mere 10 months away, the BJP central leadership has instructed warring camps within the state BJP to shed their differences in the interests of the party and organize the Vistharak programme for increasing their reach in the state, effectively.

With the ruling Congress aggressively pursuing its agenda to win a second term in office and organising a series of meeting with Congress districts leaders, an anxious BJP central leadership has instructed state BJP leaders to face the elections unitedly or be prepared for disastrous consequences. Reports have been doing the rounds about discontent simmering within the party over the way of functioning of party state president B.S. Yeddyurappa and the feud between him and Opposition leader in Legislative Council K.S. Eshwarappa.

Sources close to Eshwarappa said party president Amit Shah himself had instructed Eshwarappa and his team to work with Yeddyurappa as a team. Shah has also promised to address organizational issues in the party once he arrives in Bengaluru for a three-day visit in the first week of August.

Vertical division
Speaking to DC, a senior BJP functionary from Tumakuru district said there is a clear, vertical division in the party from the district to Mandal level in as many as 14 districts. “We have decided to keep quiet till Mr Shah arrives in Bengaluru. There is clear split between erstwhile KJP and BJP workers in these districts which is evident in Chamarajnagar, Mysuru, Hassan, Shivamogga, Udupi Haveri, Belagavi Rural, Kalaburagi, Raichur, Ballari, Davangere, Chitradurga, Tumakuru and Bengaluru Rural districts.

In Tumakuru, our presence is absolutely zero in Pavagada, Madhugiri, Koratagere and Sira”, he confided.

“I can say that the dissidence is not coming out in the open because both groups are not ready to work together at all. Erstwhile KJP workers who got positions in the BJP after Yeddyurappa become party president, are not ready to take original BJP workers into confidence. There is no proper distribution of power after Yeddyurappa returned to the party fold. In fact Yeddyurappa himself has admitted to these differences”, the source added.

According to the source, the BJP state president has set right a few anomalies on the request of the party cadre. He has revoked the suspension of senior party functionaries but these measures have not reached the Mandal level where the suspension of the cadre has not been revoked. Workers are fed up with the attitude of the state leadership and are waiting for an appropriate opportunity to pour out their grievances, he said.