Was 'kept in dark' over parivartan yatra: Shyam Jaju

New Delhi: BJP national vice president Shyam Jaju had reportedly been kept in the dark by state unit chief Manoj Tiwari over his plan to hold the “Delhi Bachao Parivartan Yatra” to expose the AAP government’s failures of fulfilling its promises made before the Assembly elections in the national capital.

While Mr Tiwari has drawn up a detailed plan for organising the “Delhi Bachao Parivartan Yatra” across the city, his senior, Mr Jaju, who is the party’s in-charge of Delhi affairs, claims he was unaware about any such activity of the state unit.

Mr Tiwari, who started his yatra from Northwest Delhi, has planned to take the “parivartan” march to all the 14 districts of the party in the city.

When asked whether he too was going to join the yatra, Mr Jaju said he was not aware about any such activity being carried out by the state unit.

As per the plan, Mr Tiwari will stay with the residents of the unauthorised colonies. Mr Tiwari’s decision of starting his yatra came as a major surprise to the Delhi BJP unit as majority of the office bearers, senior leaders, and workers had no clue regarding it hours before it started.

“I have no knowledge about any yatra. Nothing has been discussed at party platform and the announcement to start the yatra also came as a surprise to me,” said a senior office bearer.

When asked about the yatra, another senior office bearer told this newspaper that he was not informed about the same.

“No one in the organisation told me about any such yatra. When I enquired about it from others, most of them were clueless. It seems that this yatra has been organised only to establish Mr Tiwari,” he added.

A section of the party is also questioning the timing of the yatra when everyone is still mourning the demise of former Union minister Arun Jaitley.

More interestingly, majority of the senior party office bearers failed to join Mr Tiwari at the start of the yatra.

However, the Lok Sabha member from Northwest Delhi, Hans Raj Hans, was present at the start of the yatra in his constituency.

Another section of the party claimed that it was organised in haste without any proper planning. “Forget about the start of the yatra, office bearers are not even aware about the next stop. Is someone deliberately trying to sabotage it? Why was everyone in the party not informed about the yatra? It will be difficult for the party to return to power after dislodging the Arvind Kejriwal government with such a divided house,” said a senior office bearer.

Any attempt to get an official reaction from the Delhi BJP media in-charge, Pratyush Kant, turned futile.