Vijayvargia in touch with Kunwar Pranav, Batra

Sandeep Rawat

Tribune News Service

Haridwar, April 28

Top BJP organisational leaders and local leaders are in constant touch with the rebel legislators. The BJP has been claiming that it has not role in the ongoing crisis in the Congress.

Two rebel Congress legislators Pradeep Batra from Roorkee and Kunwar Pranav Champion from Khanpur met BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargia in New Delhi recently.

A source close to Kunwar Pranav says he met Vijayvargia at the house of Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing Sanjeev Baliyan. The Union minister who is well known to the legislator and was instrumental in ensuring that both Pranav and Batra openly come out against Harish Rawat.

The source says the Khanpur legislator also discussed the future political course with Vijayvargia and pressed for the BJP ticket in the next Assembly election, as now the doors of the Congress were closed for them.

Political analyst SD Pandey says Kunwar Pranav also does not want to be in the Congress again, as the party high command has taken no action against Harish Rawat against whom he has revolted. He had won the last two Assembly elections on the Congress ticket. It will not be surprising if he contests on the BJP ticket this time. Unlike in Roorkee, where the BJP ticket contenders can revolt, in Khanpur there is no such situation. There is no leader of Kumar Pranav’s stature in the BJP and the Congress in Khanpur.

He adds that already the Khanpur legislator has held close-door meetings with local BJP leaders, indicating his future political inclination and plans.

Pradesh Congress Committee vice-president Santosh Chauhan says the Vijayvargia-Kunwar Pranav meeting speaks about the BJP’s nefarious designs and its role in toppling the democratically-elected coalition government in the state.

“Kailash Vijayvargia and Uttarakhand BJP political affairs in charge Shyam Jaju have been given the responsibility to lure Congress legislators. They are still making advances through their sources to lure loyal party legislators such as Furkan Ahmed and Mamta Rakesh. Though its another matter that both these legislators are not greedy like Kunwar Pranav and Pradeep Batra,” says Chauhan.