Maharashtra Poll 2014: North Indians say too few BJP tickets given to them in Mumbai, Maharashtra election news updates, Maharashtra political news, latest and political news 2014

Maharashtra Poll 2014: North Indians say too few BJP tickets given to them in Mumbai

MUMBAI: The BJP, portrayed by the Shiv Sena and the MNS as a party exclusively of Gujaratis in the city, has another major problem to deal with: north Indian leaders are unhappy with the party as their community has not been given adequate representation in the candidate list for the election.

The BJP has only four north Indian candidates in the city despite the overwhelming support of the community for the BJP in the Lok Sabha election. "There were three north Indian candidates in last assembly election, when the party had contested only 13 seats [in Mumbai]," a BJP sympathizer said. "This time we are contesting all the seats in Mumbai but only four north Indians candidates are in the fray."

The four candidates now are Mohit Kamboj in Dindoshi, Vidya Thakur in Goregaon, Sunil Yadav in Andheri East and Amarjeet Singh in Kalina. Some in the BJP said that Kamboj did not even have much of a connection with the community as he was a Punjabi from Varanasi. A businessman, Kamboj is the former associate of a senior Congress politician who joined the BJP recently. He is now the chief of the north Indian wing of the party.

BJP politicians Sanjay Upadhayay, Amarjeet Mishra, R U Singh, Yogesh Varma and Shrinivas Tripathi were among the many from the community who were denied a party ticket but decided to involve themselves in the campaign and establish their presence in the community.

Mishra is trying to ensure that Bhojpuri singer-actor and MP Manoj Tiwari attends as many rallies as possible in the north Indian across the city, refused to discuss the issue. "North Indians are closely associated with our party and after separating from the Shiv Sena we can strongly fight for the interests of the community," he said.

The BJP politicians said that their party was in a better position to attract north Indians dejected with the Congress. They said it would be have been easier to get the community on their side if more known north Indian faces had been given party tickets. The Shiv Sena is also trying to attract north Indian voters and offered a ticket to Santosh Singh, the son of R N Singh, chief of the influential charitable trust Uttar Bharatiya Sangh.

"North Indians are with us because they know that we have a strong Hidutva ideology and will never compromise on it for any political compulsions," Shiv Sena politician Anil Parab said. "We gave a ticket to Santosh Singh to show that we are with the community."

src:TOI

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