The race for the chief ministership of Uttarakhand hotted up in the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday, with former Union minister B C Khanduri appearing to have a slight edge over former state chief minister Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, who is putting up a stiff resistance.
Both staked their claim for the post as they met party chief Rajnath Singh at his residence in Delhi.
They spent more than an hour with Rajnath amid signs that a consensus could be worked out at the meeting of newly-elected BJP legislators in Dehradun on Thursday.
Party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is incharge of Uttarakhand, avoided an interaction with the media as he drove out after the meeting.
The BJP's central leadership is said to prefer Khanduri, a Brahmin, for the chief minister's post, but the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is backing Koshiyari, a Rajput.
BJP sources say Koshiyari is being offered the position of deputy chief minister, which he has not accepted so far.
With a strong support-base, especially in the Kumaon belt, he successfully fought the state elections unlike Khanduri, who is a Lok Sabha member.
The party has appointed its general secretaries Gopinath Munde and Om Prakash Mathur as its central observers for the naming of the chief minister of Uttarakhand in consultation with party MLAs.