YASHWANT SINHA BIRTHDAY WISH BRINGS EMBARASSMENT FOR BJP

Guwahati, November 10, 2018:

Being the most potent weapons of today's media, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp have proved that there existence matters a lot to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Of the five poll-bound states, the three are BJP-governed for which the stakes are high, a tweet on November 6 brought some embarrassment for the BJP.

Among several tweets put out by the Rajasthan BJP official Twitter handle on Tuesday was a birthday wish for former union minister Yashwant Sinha.

The same poster was put up on its Facebook page BJP4Rajastan. The embarrassing part is that it referred to Sinha as “senior BJP leader” and not former BJP leader. This could have been overlooked as a gaffe by the BJP’s IT cell for the state.

He’s been a vocal defector of the Narendra Modi government and has often left the Modi-Amit Shah duo red-faced. . Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Sinha got involved in a bit of slugfest to the extent that Jaitley went on to term Sinha a “job applicant at 80.”

The BJP is not only in power in Rajasthan but also swept Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014. The state will vote on December 7, and incumbent Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje is running on the risk of the anti-incumbency factor. Some opinion polls have indicated strong chances of a revival of the Congress party in the state.

Interestingly, Raje is often seen as close to the camp of LK Advani, who has been reduced to a leader of no consequences. Sinha too was part of the legacy leaders who have been sidelined under Shah’s leadership.

So, the Facebook post and tweet for Sinha have triggered a question: is the Rajasthan BJP taking a different line from that of the Shah brigade? If yes, is it a declaration of war by the Raje camp right ahead of the assembly polls? Or is it merely a mistake by the social media team?

According to the report state BJP leaders have tried to underplay the tweet as an “error” by the IT cell, and IT cell leaders maintained a similar line.