By IANS,
New Delhi : Discontent in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the Rajya Sabha nominations has surfaced with some senior party leaders expressing reservations over nominations of Ram Jethmalani from Rajasthan and Tarun Vijay from Uttarakhand.
“There is obvious unhappiness in the party about the Rajya Sabha nominations because there are very well qualified aspirants who were waiting in line,” a BJP leader said.
Opposition to these nominations is also being seen as the reason for the absence of many senior leaders, like L.K. Advani, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Yashwant Sinha, from a two-day party convention on good governance June 5 and 6 in Maharashtra.
The BJP Monday had no answers on the absence of these leaders from the event called by party president Nitin Gadkari.
“Jethmalani is not an acceptable nomination. He fought elections against Atalji (Atal Bihari Vajpayee) from Lucknow and has also spoken for (parliament attack convict) Afzal Guru. So how can he be nominated?” another party leader said.
However, Jethmalani is now actively voicing the BJP’s stand and protesting against the delay in Afzal Guru’s execution. He Monday said that Atal Bihari Vajpayee is his political hero.
“I am formally back in BJP though the party has always been in my spirit. I am back with blessings from Atal Bihari who is my political hero and statesman. Though there were ideological differences, there was no rift in our friendship,” he told reporters in Jaipur.
BJP national executive member and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece Organiser’s former editor Seshadri Chari, in a letter to Gadkari, said that the decision to give ticket to Tarun Vijay ignoring many other party workers and years of their commitment to the party is not a good decision.
“It is surprising that the party has chosen to ignore those who have toiled sincerely for years, for its sake, and has chosen to reward those individuals whose integrity is questionable, to say the least, and whose relevance to the BJP’s political standing and future prospects is practically nil,” he said in the letter.