By IANS,
New Delhi : Three days after he snapped ties with the party over “ideological differences”, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strategist Sudheendra Kulkarni Wednesday said he had joined an advisory committee in the railway ministry headed by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.
Denying reports that he had joined the Trinamool Congress, Kulkarni said he had been appointed on a “committee in the ministry of railways that has been constituted to advise the minister on how to innovatively usher in reforms in the railways”.
Kulkarni, who was aide to senior BJP leader L.K. Advani and also adviser to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, categorically said: “I am not joining any political party.”
The 58-year-old IIT graduate-journalist-political backroom boy was a Communist Party of India-Marxist card holder before he crossed over to the other side of the political spectrum.
“I have major ideological differences with the party. I want to be honest in my views and wish to maintain party discipline. So I decided to come out,” said Kulkarni, who wrote a magazine article criticising the BJP and its ideological fountainhead Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) after the party’s poll debacle. He resigned Sunday.
He, however, maintained that his decision to quit the BJP had nothing to do with the expulsion of Jaswant Singh last week over his book “Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence”.
On his new assignment, Kulkarni told IANS: “I am only a member of this committee in the ministry of railways in which there are several other members; its chairman is Amit Mitra of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).”
Banerjee had announced in her budget speech in the Lok Sabha last month that a committee comprising experts would be formed to revamp and improve the efficiency of the Indian Railways — the second largest railroad network in the world under a single management.