After its electoral performance in the Kerala Assembly elections turned into fiasco, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Central leadership is contemplating to either rejig or dissolve its State unit.
Sources said that the Central leadership has sought the State unit to furnish a detailed constituency-wise and district-wise performance of the party in the assembly polls. However, unlike in the past, the leadership changeover with the possible removal of State president K. Surendran from office would be done only in consultation with its parent body, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Earlier the sacking of former party chiefs - Kummanam Rajasekharan and P.S.Sreedharan Pillai - had earned a bad press for the party. So the Central leadership would not undertake any misadventure immediately, sources said.
A senior functionary said that the Central committee would examine whether its decision endorsing the plan of the State leader to field Mr. Surendran in two Assembly seats backfired. Not only that, the party - led National Development Alliance (NDA) - failed to maintain the popular vote-share (12.36%) when compared to the 2016 assembly polls (14.96%).
A dispassionate analysis of the poll results revealed that the party had not increased votes in any district in the State. The rise in popular vote has been attributed to the increase in votes of individual candidates including technocrat E. Sreedharan in Palakkad and actor Suresh Gopi in Thrissur as well as the increase in number of seats the party contested this time.
In the 2016 polls, the BJP contested 98 out of the 140 assembly seats and this time, it rose to 113 seats. The party also bowed out of the Legislature after losing its lone Nemom segment.
The Central leadership would also look into the role of the unwarranted intervention of RSS State unit in managing the elections process right from the booth-levels. The interference of the RSS in the organisational apparatus of the BJP had impacted its political strategy and electioneering, sources said.
BJP insiders said that party leadership had lost connect with the local cadre and old -timers in the past five years.
The poll publicity blitzkrieg without any social base also boomeranged. The parachuting candidates in several constituencies had a detrimental effect in the elections, they said.
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