NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party's senior leadership met at the residence of the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee here late on Thursday evening to discuss the serious situation in Rajasthan, where violence and arson continue. The death toll in police firing and mob violence has gone up to 20. The meeting began as soon as party president Rajnath Singh returned from Mumbai. The leaders of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh were also present.

The party leadership seems to be particularly annoyed that despite an ultimatum given by Gujjars several weeks ago, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje did not open a dialogue with them to try and cool tempers.

In fact, even the BJP's own house in the State is not in order. Several Gujjar MLAs have sent in their resignations in the wake of Tuesday's police firing and a few months earlier some Cabinet ministers threatened to resign, with this matter getting resolved only after the intervention of Mr. Rajnath Singh.

Besides this issue, the Rajasthan BJP unit is confronted with factionalism and feuding leaders. There is a problem even between senior leaders. It is an open secret in the party that Mr. Jaswant Singh and Ms. Raje are at loggerheads — that was why a few days ago Ms. Singh filed a police complaint in Jodhpur about posters depicting Ms. Raje as a Hindu goddess.

But more than the internal feuds, the senior leadership here fears that the issue of giving Scheduled Tribe status to Gujjars — promised by the BJP three years ago — could spark widespread discontent among Meenas, a powerful group enjoying ST status. Senior leaders said on condition of anonymity that the party was on the horns of a dilemma — if it failed to deliver on its promise, the Gujjar protest would continue, and if it recommended ST status to the community, the gesture could result in Gujjar-Meena clashes. In fact, one senior party leader said his information was that the police fired on an unarmed crowd of protesting Gujjars because some of the senior police officers were Meenas. Another leader said the Meena officers were provoked when some the Gujjars whisked away and assaulted some policemen.

Party leaders also said the Gujjar complaint against Meenas was genuine in that a section of them who benefited by ST status was not tribal at all unlike the genuine tribal Bhil Meenas. It seems that it is the non-genuine tribals among Meenas who have cornered most of the quota positions.

Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said a group of Rajasthan Ministers was already collecting data on Gujjars and would submit its report by July. However, the BJP wonders whether recommending ST status to Gujjars would start a worse problem if the Meenas were to take to the streets.

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