Jamshedpur East MLA Raghubar Das (left) with Arjun Munda at the former chief minister's Circular Road residence in Ranchi on Wednesday. Picture by Prashant Mitra
New Delhi, Dec. 24: The BJP parliamentary board today decided to despatch Union minister J.P. Nadda and party vice-president Vinay Sahastrabuddhe as "observers" to Ranchi to begin the process of choosing a chief minister, but the thinking within the party's highest decision-making apparatus was to go for someone who was "clean, strong and competent" rather than get tangled in a debate over whether he should be tribal or non-tribal.
"The spirit of the mandate is clear. It is a mandate for stability, development and governance and not one to elect an individual from a particular social grouping. We have to honour the message or risk losing the newly earned goodwill," a BJP leader emphasised.
According to the brief of the BJP parliamentary board that is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nadda and Sahastrabuddhe were expected to be in Ranchi tomorrow.
They will first meet and felicitate newly elected members in small groups and elicit their views on what they expected from the next chief minister.
That done, the Delhi duo will share their feedback as well as assessment with BJP president Amit Shah after which Shah could get back to Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley. A call on who would be the next chief minister will be taken after that.
That process over, Nadda and Sahastrabuddhe will convene a meeting of MLAs in Ranchi and formally elect the leader of the legislature party before staking claim with the Governor to form the next government.
On whether sort of a consensus was evolving within the BJP brass over Raghubar Das for the top job, Nadda said, "I cannot say anything at this stage."
Sources said Nadda had embarked on his preparations right away. He held discussions with general secretary Bhupendra Yadav, who was the central minder for Jharkhand during the elections.
Nadda is also slated to meet Jaitley whose interest in Jharkhand politics goes back to the days when as a general secretary he was the " prabhari" (minder) of undivided Bihar.
Pressed for names, sources maintained that Das continued to top the chart of favourites although a couple of parliamentary board members did not exactly approve of him.
When he was BJP president, Nitin Gadkari allegedly had a few "run-ins" with Das. "But in the ultimate analysis, all that matters is who Modi and Shah want," stressed a source.
As of now, the BJP was not getting swayed by reports claiming that a "bulk" of the tribal votes went to the JMM because of the BJP's move to not project a chief minister. The logical corollary of this thesis was the BJP would have to make good its "losses" in the tribal areas by going in for a tribal chief minister.
"Five or 10 years ago, we might have been persuaded by this line. In the new dispensation, performance and delivering results are what that matter, not whether a person belongs to a particular caste or community. Take Maharashtra. Brahmins form a miniscule percentage of the voters and yet we went in for a Brahmin (Devendra Fadnavis) as our chief minister.
"Or take Haryana. The chief minister (Manohar Lal Khattar) is not from any of the dominant castes of Haryana," the source explained.
Nadda, who is originally from Himachal Pradesh, is familiar with Jharkhand because he studied in undivided Bihar and joined politics in the state as a member of the RSS's student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. He gleaned his political lessons from former BJP general secretary K.N. Govindacharya and Union minister from Bihar Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Sahastrabuddhe is from Maharashtra where he was involved in an RSS-BJP aligned think-tank in Mumbai. He came into the BJP's mainstream when Gadkari helmed the party.
Das arrived in Ranchi from Jamshedpur this afternoon and visited the residence of former chief minister Arjun Munda, whose shocking loss from to the JMM's Dashrath Gagrai from Kharsawan is on everyone's lips.
"His (Munda) defeat is unfortunate. But his services will be utilised for the party. I had gone to consult him about the future course of action," Das explained.
Later, while speaking to the media, Das also appealed to JVM chief Babulal Marandi to join the BJP-led initiative to provide Jharkhand with a stable government focussed on development.
"I appeal to everybody, including Babulal Marandi who is concerned about Jharkhand, to join us," he said.
Marandi lost from Dhanwar and Giridih, but 8 of his MLAs won.
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