With the party left nursing its wounds following the urban local body poll debacle in its redoubt, factionalism has come to fore in the district Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) roost. The allegation runs that the district BJP general secretary Vikas Tiwari and the senior BJP leader Chandrashekhar Kurl are now at  daggers drawn. With the former having allegedly threatened to kill the latter for the humiliating defeat of the saffron candidate Anu Kakkar, Chandrashekhar has lodged complaint in Bahadrabad police station on Tuesday.  However, a case was yet to be lodged till the time of filing this report.

Speaking to The Pioneer, Chandrashekhar Kurl said that Vikas Tiwari had called him a traitor during a marriage function and said that the party had suffered the debacle because of his and some others going all-out to spite the poll prospects of the party. As he had tried to make him hold fire, Tiwari had threatened to kill him, Kurl alleged. Besides, Tiwari had tried to beat him at the marriage function and he had been saved by the people present over there, the BJP leader alleged, adding that at least a couple of people had been witness to the incident.

Quizzed over the matter, the district party president Jaipal Singh Chauhan sought to play it down and said that it was a personal issue without any connection with the party. “I cannot intervene. Let them fight it out in the court,” he said. 

However, observers say that police are not acting on the complaint under pressure from the BJP’s Haridwar satrap and Cabinet Minister Madan Kaushik and others close to him. 

Kurl said that in the run-up to the civic body elections, Madan Kaushik had asked him to work for the party. “I told him about the arrogance with which Vikas Tiwari was treating the party leaders like me. But he was not serious about my complaint. Hence, the party’s debacle in its citadel,” he said.

Some saffron insiders confided that Vikas Tiwari is known to ill-behave with the party leaders and activists and also the common people. “He is inclined to lose his temper at the slightest provocation. He abused an elderly person while campaigning for Anu Kakkar for ULB polls. His haughtiness has come up for discussion many a time in the party circles. But he remains unchanged and the party brass continues to be lenient,” says a party insider.