Gopinath Munde to Meet BJP Bigwigs
posted on Jun 18, 2011 @ 8:38PM
Senior BJP leader Gopinath Munde has kept the party leadership guessing about his game plan with the announcement that he would decide his course of action after talks with BJP bigwigs on Saturday. Munde has been sulking for over two weeks over his differences with BJP president Nitin Gadkari.
Gopinath Munde on Friday told mediapersons that he is "deeply pained" by the developments in the BJP and he will convey his anguish to party seniors in New Delhi. "I will decide on my next move after I meet my party leaders," Munde said on Friday. The leaders he referred to are Gadkari, L K Advani, Venkaiah Naidu (in charge of the party's organizational affairs in Maharashtra), and state BJP president Sudhir Mungantiwar.
The Munde camp is willing to broker peace with Gadkari if Mungantiwar steps down as Maharashtra BJP chief to make way for a Munde loyalist. While the Gadkari camp thinks that the crusty OBC leader and his intermittent pressure tactics should be ignored in order to maintain party discipline, Munde's supporters claim the BJP central leadership is keen on cutting to size mass leaders such as Munde, Narendra Modi and Vasundhara Raje.