Smriti Irani as BJP face for Delhi poll campaign? Party mulls over projecting a single leader in Capital after a decade

“Several possibilities are on the table, including fielding Smriti ji, regarding whom the national leadership is in the process of taking the final decision. Or, the party may bet on an incumbent Lok Sabha MP popular enough to pull the party through the Delhi Assembly elections. If an MP gets elected CM, they may then be replaced by a former Union Minister,” said the BJP functionary.

Some BJP leaders sought to underline that projecting a face for the elections would not imply that the person chosen was the Chief Ministerial pick, according to them, it will mean that the leader will be the “second-tallest BJP leader” after Prime Minister Narendra Modi as far as the election campaign is concerned. However, another section of party leaders believe such a move, by implication, will not leave much room for any other interpretation.

“The party is deliberating over throwing its weight behind a single face for the Delhi Assembly elections; the matter came up for discussion among senior leaders as recently as Tuesday. If this happens, it will be the first time that the party does so in Delhi after 2015,” said a BJP insider.

The leader said “several Union Ministers” and BJP national general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh, the RSS point person in the central leadership, were at the meeting held at the party’s DDU Marg headquarters on a day when Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal stepped down as Delhi Chief Minister, paving the way for Atishi to take charge of the government.

“This was the second time that the party met to discuss affairs in Delhi, including organisational changes, after a meeting in Vrindavan and one more scheduled in Ranthambore in Rajasthan in the coming days. The Union Ministers present there asked for suggestions on whom the party could project as the face of its Delhi election campaign based on various criteria,” said the BJP insider.

The practice of not naming a CM face has become somewhat codified in the BJP’s standard operating procedure over the years for reasons ranging from avoiding infighting to keeping the focus on the central leadership, with Modi at the core of any poll campaign. The last time the BJP projected a face for its poll campaign in Delhi — apart from the PM — was in 2015 when Kiran Bedi, the country’s first woman IPS officer, was announced as its CM pick. This happened within days of Bedi breaking ranks with Kejriwal, with whom she had participated in the Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption (IAC) movement.

However, the experiment ended on a disastrous note for the BJP as the AAP swept the elections by winning 67 of Delhi’s 70 Assembly seats. The BJP was reduced to three, with Bedi losing to the AAP’s S K Bagga in east Delhi’s Krishna Nagar constituency.

In addition to choosing a “face for the campaign”, sources said the BJP leadership was also mulling over “a larger role” for its Delhi MPs, both organisationally and electorally, in the coming days by keeping “adequate caste and community representation” in mind.

“As far as the MPs are concerned, they are being assessed based on their popularity as well as the caste and community they belong to. The party may go in for significant organisational changes in Delhi during Navratri in October after the conclusion of the Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir Assembly elections,” said a BJP leader.

The BJP’s senior leadership, including PM Modi and BJP national president J P Nadda, have told the party’s seven Lok Sabha MPs from Delhi during separate instructions that they should lead the Delhi election campaign in addition to delivering on their promises in their constituencies. Six of these MPs are first-timers.