Seasoned BJP parliamentarian Rajiv Pratap Rudy on Wednesday won the fiercely contested election to a key post at the Constitution Club of India, defeating not only party colleague Sanjeev Balyan but also a spirited move by a powerful lobby of his own party to dislodge him from the control of the elite club.
Rudy defeated Balyan convincingly in the election to the post of secretary (administration) with a margin of 100 votes after a tense counting of ballots that went well past midnight on Tuesday. The Lok Sabha MP from Saran in Bihar has been nurturing the club for the last 25 years. Current and former MPs are members of the club.
The politically insignificant election made headlines as the BJP-vs-BJP face-off snowballed into a bitter intra-party tussle that exposed the fault lines in the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dispensation and extended an opportunity to the Opposition to play
into it.
Top Opposition leaders, such as Congress’s Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, followed by home minister Amit Shah, BJP president J.P. Nadda and several Union ministers had turned up to vote in the high-voltage contest. A record 707 votes out of the total 1,295 were polled.
Rudy’s victory was widely credited to the rallying of Opposition members behind the Vajpayee-era BJP leader as the word spread that the top leadership of the saffron party had sponsored challenger Balyan. Balyan, a Jat leader from western Uttar Pradesh, too blamed his defeat on the Opposition’s support for his “friendly rival”.
“Most members from the Opposition parties voted for one candidate. Many of them wanted to vote for me, but they couldn’t as their top leadership had asked them to vote for another candidate,” Balyan told reporters on Wednesday, without naming Rudy.
BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, known for his polarising image, had openly taken charge of ensuring Balyan’s victory, and this seemed to have riled the Opposition members, particularly the Congress. Many in the BJP too dislike Dubey, a loose cannon who many believe is used by the top leadership to test-fire controversial decisions and policies. Dubey has in the recent past launched scathing attacks on the Gandhi family.
“Nishikant’s presence not only drove the Opposition to back Rudy, a relatively sober face, but also angered many BJP members, who felt that the party leadership had been giving him undue importance,” a BJP MP said.
A video clip of Rahul Gandhi’s handshake with Rudy outside Parliament’s entrance went viral after the results, with many claiming that the Congress leader’s support had been the clincher for the sidelined BJP veteran.
In the video, Rahul is seen asking Rudy about the club election and telling him
“don’t worry”.
“Rahul Gandhi-backed Rajiv Pratap Rudy defeated Modi-Shah candidate in the Constitution Club elections,” several handles on X said, attaching the clip of the
handshake.
The caste angle playing into the wider succession tussle in the BJP also got flagged by the club election. In Delhi’s political corridors, the tussle between Rudy and Balyan was seen as a Rajput-vs-Jat battle that extended to an Amit Shah-vs-Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath battle.