Kusum Rai. Picture by Naeem Ansari

Lucknow, Nov. 12: Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and senior BJP leader Kalyan Singh is facing the anger of colleagues in the party’s state unit after the central leadership gave a Rajya Sabha ticket to his confidante Kusum Rai.

Sensing the anger, Kalyan stayed away from meetings at the BJP party office in Lucknow on November 10 when Rai filed her nomination. He was to have addressed the legislators, sources said.

Kalyan, a popular leader with support among backward class voters, has also been offered a Lok Sabha ticket from Etah for the 2009 elections. The former chief minister did not comment.

But the state unit’s senior leaders are seething against the attempts by the central leadership to appease a leader “who is responsible for the debacle of the party in the 2007 election”.

The BJP had hit rock bottom in 2004 with 10 Lok Sabha seats. Next came the drubbing in the 2007 Assembly elections when the BJP, led by Kalyan, won only 51 of the 408 seats in Uttar Pradesh.

“We feel a huge chunk of Brahmin voters shifted their loyalty to the BSP because of him and the party is making the same mistake now,” said a senior Brahmin leader, who is a former MP and a former Union minister.

Party president Rajnath Singh appointed Ramapati Ram Tripathi as state chief in September 2007 to woo Brahmins.

Since then, Kalyan had not been attending any party meetings. In June when L.K. Advani held a massive rally in Kanpur, Kalyan was not invited. “I have not been told about this rally. Nobody invited me,” Kalyan had said.

A general secretary who did not name Rai attacked Kalyan for “lobbying” for a Rajya Sabha ticket for her “when the party’s support base in Uttar Pradesh is in tatters”.

Rai today denied her nomination had anything to do with Kalyan and said she was given the ticket because the party was planning to increase women’s participation in legislative bodies.

BJP national vice-president Kalraj Mishra yesterday issued a statement in defence of Rai’s nomination. “It is a consensus decision,” he said.

This is not the first time that Kalyan’s promotion of Rai has raised eyebrows. In 1998 when Kalyan was chief minister, Rajnath, then state party president, had run a campaign against him. Kalyan was forced to step down.