By IANS,
New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath Singh Sunday said he was confident Vasundhara Raje would quit as leader of opposition in the Rajasthan assembly while she softened her stance and agreed to abide by the party leadership’s decision.
Rajnath Singh had asked her Wednesday night to resign from the post after the party’s debacle in the April-May Lok Sabha elections and the state assembly polls late last year.
Raje, former chief minister of the state, had refused to step down, stating that she alone could not be held responsible for the party’s poll debacle.
The BJP’s tally of 21 seats in the 2004 elections came down crashing to four in the April-May Lok Sabha elections, while it lost power in the assembly elections late last year, paving the way for the Congress’s return.
Singh, who was earlier adamant that she quit and was backed by party veteran L.K. Advani, Sunday told reporters that there was no deadline for her to step down and expressed confidence that she would abide by the party leadership’s decision.
The issue came up at a meeting of the party’s parliamentary board, the highest decision making body of the BJP, here hours after Raje said in Jaipur that she would follow the instructions of the board.
Earlier in the week, in a virtual show of her strength, Raje drafted over 50 legislators to visit Delhi to meet Advani and Rajnath Singh.
While Advani snubbed them and refused to meet them, Singh reprimanded them stating that this was no way to protest. The party leaders subsequently summoned Raje to Delhi but she remained defiant and refused to quit her post.