Girish Vyas quits BJP posts and membership, opens office for rebel Anil Sole in graduates' poll

Discontent inside the Bharatiya Janata Party over the Nagpur graduates' constituency election has spilled into the open. Former MLA Girish Vyas has given up every post he held in the party and has also quit its primary membership, saying he stands with former MLA Anil Sole, who is contesting the election as an independent against the party's decision.

Vyas made his move on the last day for withdrawing nomination papers, which has made its timing a talking point in political circles. The party has named Sudhakar Kohale as its official candidate. Sole, who did not get the ticket, chose to stay in the fray regardless, and Vyas's exit has now added to the party's embarrassment over how tickets were handed out.

Vyas has gone further than a resignation letter. He has made his office available for Sole's campaign, and the office has already been inaugurated, on October 8. It is located at Badkas Chowk, close to the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a detail that has fed further speculation. The opening was a clear sign that Sole had no plan to step back.

The party did try to bring Sole around. Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule appealed to him, and state BJP president Ravindra Chavan went to his residence. Neither effort worked. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had also urged rebel candidates to withdraw, saying the party had given opportunities to capable people, and there was talk that Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had later been asked to persuade Sole. The party leadership continues to stand behind Kohale.

Speaking about his decision, Vyas criticised the way the BJP now functions. He said the party for which he gave his youth, and for which he set everything at home aside and did small jobs, does not remember its workers when a big decision comes up. In his account, workers are not consulted, key workers are not taken into confidence, and one person arrives and decides whatever he wishes.

Vyas argued that under party rules a candidature should be announced only after a meeting of the parliamentary board, and asked why the graduates' constituency candidature was declared earlier. He said this went against the BJP's own constitution. He objected to Kohale's candidature on the same ground, noting that Kohale is a party worker just as he is, and that the names of aspirants from Nagpur should first have gone to the parliamentary board, which did not happen.

He described his fight as one meant to spare the next generation in the party from suffering, and said old workers want decisions taken within a set framework. He would not say that old workers are being suffocated, he added, but many who came later have moved ahead. He said he never learnt to put on such a show, and if the party is content with it, he too had to take a decision, which is why he gave up primary membership. He also alleged that people who work against the party are made office-bearers, asked whether other workers were dead or inactive or had run out of capability, and said those handed posts after loyalists were sidelined are not very capable.

Vyas is counted among the old organisational leaders of the Nagpur BJP. His father, Pandit Bachhraj Vyas, was a prominent Nagpur figure associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, rose from organisational work to the national leadership of the Jana Sangh, and was elected its national president at the Vijayawada session in 1965. Girish Vyas himself worked in the Sangh and the BJP for many years, and in 2015 he was the party's candidate for the Legislative Council from the Nagpur local bodies constituency, winning unopposed. That background is why his resignation is being read as a significant development.

A split in the BJP vote could affect Congress candidate and outgoing Legislative Council member Abhijit Wanjari, though the real effect will be known only at the polling stage. In 2020, Wanjari defeated the BJP's Sandip Joshi by 18,910 votes. In 2014, Sole, then the BJP candidate, beat Congress's Dr Baburao Taywade by 31,259 votes and polled 52,485 votes himself.

With Sole in the contest and Kohale also on the ballot as the official nominee, the election is likely to be a three-cornered fight, and discussion of the equations in Nagpur's graduates' constituency has sharpened.