Comments
Former BJP President and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday denied reports that he had sought action against veterans — LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar — who had rejected the party’s official line that it was a “collective loss” in Bihar.
Advani and Joshi, edged out of the Parliamentary Board and accommodated in the ‘Margdarshak Mandal’, issued a statement following a post-mortem of the Bihar results that was undertaken earlier this week. While the BJP tried to shield its brass from criticism by terming the electoral debacle a “collective” loss, the veterans asserted that “to say that everyone is responsible for the defeat in Bihar is to ensure that no one is held responsible. It shows that those who would have appropriated credit if the party had won are bent on shrugging off responsibility for the disastrous showing in Bihar”.
The BJP did not want to escalate the issue with the veterans, and Gadkari’s Friday statement was seen as part of this strategy. Gadkari maintained that Advani and Joshi are “our highly respected leaders and neither I nor any other party functionary has ever shown any disrespect to them. There is absolutely no question of anyone asking for an explanation from them and demanding disciplinary action against them.”
Meanwhile, party MP and former Home Secretary RK Singh, who had objected to candidates with a criminal profile in the BJP’s list ahead of the election, has now criticised the BJP for not adhering to the moral values it once espoused.
PTI reports: Manoj Tewari, Lok Sabha member from Delhi, on Friday joined several other BJP leaders in criticising the party’s election strategy in Bihar and lauded the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance as “undoubtedly better”.
The Bhojpuri singer-turned-politician said the party failed to convince the people to vote for BJP candidates in the keenly-fought Bihar elections.
“We failed to make people vote for the party at the Centre and earn maximum benefits. We clearly failed to convey our party agenda to the people of Bihar,” said Tewari, who represents North East Delhi in Lok Sabha. “Undoubtedly the strategy of Grand Alliance (of JD(U)-RJD-Congress) proved better than ours. We could have campaigned in a more strategic way to reach out larger masses,” he added.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.