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Mange Ram Garg elected New Delhi BJP chief

Mange Ram Garg was today unanimously elected president of the Delhi Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party in the absence of any other contender for the post.

BJP all-India general secretary Venkaiah Naidu, who was the returning officer, said all four sets of nominations filed on Mange Ram's behalf yesterday were found to be in order.

With no other contender, Mange Ram was declared unanimously elected. Crackers exploded and ladoos made their rounds at the BJP unit headquarters in New Delhi.

Naidu said with today's election, the BJP had finished the process of organisational elections in all states. He also announced that only five nominations had been received for the seven vacant national council seats. The party president would consult other leaders and fill the two vacant seats, he said.

The five members elected to the national council are Lal Behari Tiwari, MP, Nand Kishore Garg, Delhi State Minister S P Ratawal, Mohini Garg and Mewa Ram Arya.

Among others present on the occasion were Union Minister M L Khurana, Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh, BJP Vice-President K L Sharma, senior leaders V K Malhotra, K R Malkani, outgoing president Kedarnath Sahni and ministers Harsh Vardhan and S P Ratawal.

Earlier, a resolution proposed by Kedarnath Sahni congratulating the central government for deciding to grant full statehood to Delhi was passed unanimously.

Mange Ram Garg said his first priority would be to secure a resounding victory for the BJP in the coming assembly elections.

''I will endeavour to carry everybody with me and given the dedication of the party workers and the guidance of our senior leaders the BJP would come back to power in Delhi,'' said Garg, earlier the treasurer of the party's Delhi unit.

Though Kedarnath Sahni's two-year tenure as president had ended last October, the elections were postponed because of the Lok Sabha elections, Naidu said.

Asserting that the BJP was the only party with inner-party democracy, Naidu said while the Congress had the ''domination of nominations'' and followed dynastic politics, nobody knew what was happening in the communist parties which functioned behind closed doors.

Making light of the recent teaming up of Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav, Naidu said ''these leaders get together in the morning, fight in the afternoon and split in the evening''.

He also accused the Congress of trying to rake up the Ayodhya issue to divide the BJP's allies. While the BJP would not compromise on its ideology, it would not impose its thinking on its allies and would go strictly by the national agenda of governance, Naidu said.

UNI

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