Amit Shah will be visiting Puducherry on 24 April. His itinerary has several programmes, however, his primary objective in the coastal city apparently is to sort out and diffuse tension between Chief Minister, N. Rangasamy and the BJP legislators of the Puducherry Assembly.
Amit Shah’s Puducherry visit is not an isolated event since recently, B.L. Santosh, General Secretary of the Saffron party, visited the city and met the BJP legislators. He sought to get the ground realities, issues, and the first- hand information about the political situation in Puducherry.
Another BJP national secretary, Nirmal Kumar Surana, who is also assigned the charge of the Union Territory, attended a meeting with BJP legislators and informed the party men about the decision to contest in the ensuing Civil body polls alone. His announcement interestingly came after B.L. Santosh’s interventional visit to Puducherry.
There were differences developing between the BJP and Rangasamy ever since the coalition government was formed between the All India NR Congress (AINRC) and BJP. The fault lines were visible when CM Rangasamy choose not to visit New Delhi for the formal meet and greet ceremony with the Prime Minister, Home Minister, or Finance Minister.
Chief minister Rangasamy is also the Finance Minister of the Union Territory. He did not present the budget in the Puducherry assembly suggesting an obvious misunderstanding regarding the central government’s assistance in terms of the finances of the state. Chief Minister Rangasamy, however, presented the vote on account instead of a budget.
DMK has taken an aggressive stance against the Central Government. The leader of Opposition in the Puducherry Assembly R Siva said “The union ministers are regularly reaching Puducherry but no benefits are provided to the territory. We demand that the BJP national leadership meet all the promises it had made during the run-up to the 2021 Assembly elections.”