The ransacked furniture at the BJP office in Patna. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Oct. 1: Angry over selection of a couple of candidates, BJP supporters of Begusarai today went on the rampage at the party’s state headquarters here.

The aggrieved supporters ransacked the chamber of the party’s state unit general secretary Rajneesh Kumar. Apart from ransacking the office furniture, they damaged a television set.

The party workers were protesting the selection of Surendra Mehta as a candidate from Begusarai and of Kundan Singh from Bachwara seat.

While BJP workers from Bachwara are pressing for the candidature of Arvind Singh, those from Begusarai were angry over denial of ticket to the BJP’s sitting MLA Srikrishna Singh.

Their act forced party leaders to seek help of police. The cops reached the spot immediately and locked the main gate of the party office on Bir Chanda Patel Path.

Police personnel were deployed outside the gate to prevent the repetition of the incident.

Angry party workers, however, were in no mood to relent. Over a hundred of them squatted on a dharna on the BJP office premises, raising slogans against the party’s state leadership. They split into two groups.

“The party leaders appear to be hell bent on ensuring defeat of the BJP in Bachwara. Else, they would not have fielded Kundan, who secured just over nine thousand votes in the previous Assembly elections,” Manoj Thakur of Bachwara told The Telegraph.

Another party worker from the same place, Saurabh Kumar, claimed that Ranjneesh Kumar, who hails from Begusarai, was responsible for the “blunder” and he managed a ticket for Kundan by passing on false information to the state and central leadership.

The party workers from Begusarai were more vocal in their protest. One Ram Sajjan Singh from there lost his temper when asked about the leaders whom he held responsible for denial of ticket to Srikrishna despite the fact that he won the seat by over 10,000 votes in the bypolls held in 2009.

“Both Sushil Kumar Modi and Rajneesh are hand-in-glove in this dirty game and if they really have the courage they should come and talk to us over the issue,” he said.

Another party worker from Begusarai, Arun Kumar Singh, claimed that the way the state leaders behaved in distributing tickets, one should not be surprised if the party failed to secure a single seat in the Begusarai district.

Though the party workers were blaming the state leaders for bringing the situation to such a passé, none of them accepted that they ransacked the office of the state unit general secretary.

“It appears to be a handiwork of supporters of Rajneesh, who want to project us as criminals. We are here to lodge our protest in a democratic way,” said BJP worker from Begusarai Pankaj Kumar.

Interestingly, none of the party senior leaders, majority of whom were in Patna, had turned up in the office till the time of filing this report. “We have informed the leaders about the day’s developments but none has responded so far,” said a BJP worker who mans the party office.