Bharatiya Janata Party cadre on Friday resorted to a sit-in hunger strike at the party office on V.K.K. Menon Road here opposing the decision of the party to field former MP, C.P. Radhakrishnan, for the Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat.
The BJP on Thursday announced a seven-party alliance in which the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) will contest 14 seats, the BJP and the Pattali Makkal Katchi eight seats each, and the Marumalarchi Daravida Munnetra Kazhagam seven. Even when seat-sharing talks were in progress, many names were doing the rounds and strong contenders in the race for the seat were Mr. Radhakrishnan, party State secretary G.K.S. Selvakumar, national secretary of the party’s trade cell S.R. Sekhar, and State general secretary Vanathi Sreenivasan.
On Friday morning, more than 150 party activists staged a sit-in urging the high command to change the candidate and announce Mr. Selvakumar as the candidate.
The party’s district president, R. Nandakumar, and the district unit spokesperson of the party, Kovai Sridharan, said that in the last 10 years, it was Mr. Selvakumar who struggled a lot for keeping the party going. The agitators said Mr. Radhakrishnan was not active in the party’s organisational activities for the last 10 years. When contacted, Mr. Radhakrishnan told The Hindu that such resistance and opposition was quite common in politics.
He said the agitators would have had some expectations and disappointment had perhaps resulted in such a protest.
Denying the charges, he said that he had always been accessible to the party people.
