By IANS,
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Friday ruled out taking action against veteran leader Jaswant Singh for voicing in the media criticism of the party after the poll debacle but it said the leadership does not approve of such issues being discussed publicly.
“There is no proposal (for action) against Jaswant Singh (and so) there is no question of taking any action,” BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.
“Interpreting his words as charges against some party leaders is wrong. The media is wrong in saying that action will be taken against him,” he told reporters.
The party would discuss the issues raised by the former external affairs minister, said Rudy, adding that the senior BJP leaders “feel that the party’s internal issues should not be brought in the media or the public.”
On Wednesday Jaswant Singh angrily stated at the party’s core group meeting at the residence of L.K. Advani that there should be a connect between “parinaam aur puraskar (results and rewards)”.
His reference was to Arun Jaitley who was the chief poll manager for the party and was later made the leader of the opposition in the upper house of parliament, a post which Jaswant Singh held before being elected to the Lok Sabha.
Jaswant Singh is also learnt to have said that those who were in the charge of the elections were now finding faults with the campaign by writing in the media.
Besides Jaitley writing in the Indian Express, key Advani aide and pol strategist Sudheendra Kulkarni has analysed the poll results in the Tehelka newsmagazine. They have made comments critical of the party.
Next was Jaswant Singh, who in an interview to the NDTV television channel, said the BJP needed to be a “current party” and should reinvent itself.
Rumours that action would be taken against Jaswant Singh began after Advani met party president Rajnath Singh, even though Jaswant had strongly defended Advani’s candidature as the party’s prime ministerial nominee.