New Delhi: In order to preempt Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, former IPS officer Kiran Bedi was projected in a huff as the Bharatiya Janata Party's chief ministerial candidate for the February 7 Delhi Assembly elections.
According to sources in the RSS, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in favour of making Irani, who had unsuccessfully contested against Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi in the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the face of the party for the Delhi elections.
"Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and BJP president Amit Shah were not in favour of Irani to be the face of the party. Therefore, they declared Bedi as the party's CM nominee to preempt Irani," said the sources.
They said had Irani been projected as the BJP's CM candidate, the result of the elections perhaps may have been completely different.
The BJP suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) winning just three of the 70 seats. Even Bedi lost miserably to AAP candidate SK Bagga from the BJP's bastion Krishna Nagar constituency. AAP won the remaining 67 seats.
The RSS is of the view that Irani or even Union Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan could have given Kejriwal a tough fight and the BJP would not have gone down in such an embarrassing manner.
Irani had given Rahul a run for his money in Amethi despite entering the fray quite late in the day. However, she lost to him by 1,07,903 votes. While she polled 3,00,748 votes, Rahul garnered 4,08,651 votes in his family bastion.
The RSS has already attacked Bedi for party's dismal performance in the Assembly elections. Sangh, in its mouthpiece 'Panchjanya', questioned whether Bedi's appointment as CM candidate was correct.
On Monday, RSS had called BJP's poll campaign defensive. It had also said that the decision to bring in Bedi to counter Kejriwal was taken too late.
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