Party parl board's CM choice will be final, says BJP leader as MLAs meet Raje

Jaipur, Dec 5 (PTI) The BJP's in-charge for Rajasthan Arun Singh Tuesday said the decision of the party's parliamentary board about the chief minister's post will be acceptable to all even as newly-elected MLAs continued to visit ex-CM Vasundhara Raje at her residence which is seen as a show of strength.

Raje, a two-time former chief minister of Rajasthan, is said to be among the frontrunners for the post this time also. The BJP swept the Assembly elections in the state, winning 115 of the 199 seats where polling took place.

As Arun Singh reached the residence of BJP state president C P Joshi, reporters asked him about the chief minister's post. Singh replied, "The decision of the parliamentary board will be acceptable to all." Later, Singh and Joshi as well as several MLAs reached the BJP office.

On the other hand, sources from Raje camp claimed that nearly 50 MLAs have met her at her residence since Monday. "Some of them met her today," a leader in that camp said.

While many of the MLAs termed the visit a courtesy meeting, some of them hinted that Raje is a suitable face for the next chief minister because of her work in the previous two tenures.

"BJP has returned to power in Rajasthan only because of the work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vasundhara Raje," said Nasirabad MLA Ramswaroop Lamba.

Asked whether the BJP MLAs will support Raje for the CM's post, he said the legislators are with her.

Malviya Nagar MLA Kalicharan Saraf said the party's top leadership will decide who will be the chief minister and added that Raje is acceptable by all legislators. "A legislature party meeting will be held and the parliamentary board will decide," he told reporters while leaving Raje's residence on Monday night.

Babu Singh Rathore, Prem Chand Bairwa, Govind Ranipuria, Kalulal Meena, KK Vishnoi, Pratap Singh Singhvi, Gopichand Meena, Bahadur Singh Koli, Shankar Singh Rawat, Manju Baghmar, Vijay Singh Chaudhary, Pushpendra Singh and Shatrughan Gautam and other MLAs met Raje on Monday.

On Tuesday, Jogaram Patel, Arun Amra Ram, Arjun Garg, Sanjeev Beniwal, and Ajay Singh Kilak reached Raje's residence.

According to the party sources, Arun Singh and C P Joshi met BJP national president J P Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi on Monday.

Raje has been the chief minister of Rajasthan twice from 2003 to 2008 and from 2013 to 2018. While she was the chief ministerial face in earlier elections, the party decided to go to polls without projecting any leader for the post and PM Modi leading the campaign.

After the BJP's defeat in 2018 and the changed dynamics within the party, Raje was seen as a sidelined leader. Now that the party has returned to power in the state, her supporters are expecting that she gets a chance to be the chief minister for the third time. PTI