New Delhi: Aware of the fact that one of its prominent Brahmin face Lal Muni Chaubey, a four-time Lok Sabha MP from Buxar who has been denied a ticket this time, can severely dent its prospects in many seats of Bihar and even in eastern Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday went all out to placate him.
Senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi sounded confident that he would be able to convince Chaubey not to contest as an Independent against the official party nominee from Buxar, Ashwini Kumar Chaubey.
"We are trying our best and serious efforts are being made to convince him against contesting from Buxar as an independent candidate. He is a very senior party colleague. We hope that he will see the reason and abide by the party's decision," said Modi.
Earlier Ashwini Kumar Chaubey, too, met the miffed leader and pleaded with him to support his candidature. But the veteran leader made it clear that he had been humiliated by the party and so there was no question of him campaigning for the BJP candidates.
Lal Muni Chaubey even called party President Rajnath Singh "a leader of slaves" who had sidelined genuine supporters. He said that he had decided to contest as an Independent against Ashwini Kumar Chaubey.
"BJP has become a party of slaves and Rajnath Singh is a leader of slaves. I belong to Buxar as well as Varanasi. I will ensure BJP loses in the poorvanchal belt of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh including Varanasi," Lal Muni Chaubey said. BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is contesting from Varanasi apart from Vadodara in Gujarat.
Echoing his colleague from Rajasthan Jaswant Singh's views, he claimed that the voters of Buxar would defeat the "fake BJP candidate". He said that Ashwini Kumar Chaubey is an outsider who wanted to contest from Bhagalpur but the party placated him by accomodating him from Buxar.
Denying reports that BJP leadership has offered him the post of governor after the party forms the government at the Center, Chaubey said he was not interested in any post and wanted to strengthen the party which had been admitting even those people in large numbers who had been its virulent critic just a few days back.
He alleged that senior leaders like Lal Krishna Advani and Jaswant Singh had been humiliated by the party leadership. Pointing that the name of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani's names are missing from the campaign slogans, he added that the latter has been given the Gandhinagar seat to ensure his defeat so that there is no one who can challenge the top leaders.
Chaubey had won from Buxar in 1996, 98, 99 and 2004. He narrowly lost to Rashtriya Janata Dal's Sadanand Singh in the 2009 elections by just over 2000 votes.
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