RSS not keen to host Nadda, asks BJP to send Rajnath or working chief to Samanway Baithak

New Delhi: The much-anticipated first Samanway Baithak (coordination meeting) of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, is turning out to be an embarrassment for the Bharatiya Janata Party. 

The RSS is learnt to be not keen on hosting the BJP chief JP Nadda at the meeting scheduled to be held in Palakkad, Kerala between August 31 - September 2. 

The Sangh has reportedly asked the BJP to either send senior leader Rajnath Singh to the crucial meeting or appoint a new working chief who can be part of the Baithak, sources said. 

The Sangh has been angry with Nadda ever since his statement during the peak of electioneering for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls where he had reportedly said that "the BJP has grown from the time it needed the RSS and is now “saksham” (capable) and runs its own affairs."

The statement had reportedly upset the RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP, very much leading to the rebuke to Nadda. This has set the ball rolling for the appointment of a new working chief of the BJP ahead of the Assembly polls scheduled soon.

NewsDrum has reported over the past few days that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention was needed to salvage the deteriorating relationship between the two saffron partners. 

A new working chief of BJP is expected to begin the relationship with Sangh afresh. If the appointment isn't made by the end of this week, the RSS wants Rajnath Singh to represent the BJP at the meeting. 

The name of Singh was suggested as he is considered to have a good equation with the RSS' top brass, sources pointed out.   

The Samanway Baithak is being considered crucial as it comes soon after the "less than adequate" performance of the saffron party during the 2024 polls and aims to address various coordination issues between the RSS and the BJP ahead of crucial Assembly polls in Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra and Jharkhand to be held soon. 

Sources stated that the Sangh is expected to iron out any issues with the BJP as the saffron partners need to go into polls as a united force so as not to allow the opposition to make further political gains.

"Hence, the Sangh needs a leader at the meet whom they can trust and respect," a source said. 

What will be on the agenda

Apart from better coordination with BJP other issues likely to be taken up for discussion at the Kerala meet are crime against women and atrocities against Bangladeshi Hindus. 

There would also be a concerted effort on the part of the Sangh to assure the underprivileged Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities that their reservation will not be touched, a narrative which is being floated by the opposition in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on exemption of creamy layers from reservation benefits, sources said.

The meeting is expected to bring out a strong resolution on “ensuring women’s security” in the aftermath of the RG Kar Medical College rape and murder incident in West Bengal. The meeting is likely to call upon state governments to ensure protection of women’s rights, sources added.

At the meeting top saffron leadership is also likely to take stock of the prevailing situation in Bangladesh and call for the protection of the Hindu population of the neighboring country which is bearing the brunt of these atrocities. A resolution calling upon the country’s government to ensure safety of their minorities is also likely to be passed.