By IANS,
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Sunday declined to comment on its leader Yashwant Sinha’s latest criticism of the party leadership.
“I don’t want to react on this issue,” BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told IANS in reply to a question about Sinha’s remarks during an interview to news channel NDTV in which he expressed dissatisfaction with the party leadership for not seriously analysing the reasons for its defeat in the April-May Lok Sabha elections.
Disregarding BJP chief Rajnath Singh’s warning to members, at the party conclave June, to refrain from making public comments about the party, Sinha said in the interview that the BJP’s defeat was explained within the party in a “casual, light hearted manner”.
“I thought there would be a lot of activity and introspection… somebody would ask me why we lost, where we lost. I found that nothing of that kind happened and that kind of disappointed me. I waited until we were called to a meeting of the newly elected parliamentarians May 31, and that again was somewhat casual, in a light hearted manner and we tried to (explain) away our defeat… It was not serious,” Sinha said.
Sinha also differed with the explanation given by Advani and Arun Jaitley that “emergence of a bipolar polity in the country” was the reason behind the party’s defeat in the elections.
“These are consolations we can give to ourselves,” he said.
The former finance minister expressed regret that despite having presented five budgets in the past, his party did not ask him to discuss this year’s union budget.
“I expected the party to ask me to speak on the budget… I was informed that somebody else was going to speak on this… and that clearly disappointed me,” he said.