By IANS,
New Delhi : After the veterans it is the regional leaders who are queering the pitch for the beleaguered Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with former Uttarakhand chief minister B.C. Khanduri Wednesday challenging the party’s decision to sack him while rebellious Vasundhara Raje seems unlikely to quit as leader of opposition in Rajasthan in a hurry.
Khanduri, who was forced to step down as chief minister after the party’s debacle in the April-May Lok Sabha elections, has in a letter to the party alleged that he was made a scapegoat and sacked in haste. The BJP lost all the five seats in the state.
He also expressed his anguish over not being invited to the BJP’s three-day meeting in Shimla last week.
Khanduri’s defiance comes amid continuing crisis in the BJP that has seen the sacking of former cabinet minister Jaswant Singh, a revolt in its Rajasthan unit and severe criticism of the party leadership by Rajya Sabha MP Arun Shourie.
Earlier, another former cabinet minister and senior leader Yashwant Sinha wrote a strongly worded letter lambasting the leadership for not analysing the poll results and rewarding leaders who should have been taken to task. The BJP’s tally fell to 116 from 138 in the previous 2004 elections.
According to BJP sources, the Uttarakhand leader said he could have explained at Shimla the reasons the party was routed in the April-May Lok Sabha election when the BJP lost all five seats.
BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad refused to comment on the letter, saying: “There is no need to comment on everything.”
Khanduri, a former Indian Army officer, was replaced by Ramesh Pokhriyal as chief minister.
In Rajasthan, leader of opposition in the assembly Vasundhara Raje, who was asked to quit her post over a week ago, had not done so arguing that she alone could not be held responsible for the BJP’s debacle in the state.
Over 50 of the 78 BJP MLAs in the state had even come down to Delhi to express solidarity with Raje in a virtual show of strength even as she agreed to quit but on her terms.
Her terms are she be given a plum organisational post in Delhi, her replacement should be of her choice and that two MLAs suspended last week for backing her be reinstated.
But party chief Rajnath Singh maintained that all issues could be discussed after she resigned and told her not to chair a meeting of the party’s legislators ahead of the assembly session that began Wednesday.
Raje insisted she would attend it and reportedly agreed to quit only after the session was over. Her word prevailed and the former Rajasthan chief minister chaired the meeting of her party’s MLAs.