Former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani, former party president Murli Manohar Joshi and former finance minister Yashwant Sinha released a statement late on Tuesday questioning the direction of the party after the defeat, which risks embarrassing Modi.
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“Reports in a section of the media indicating that I have suggested to party president Amit Shah to initiate disciplinary action against them are absolutely incorrect and misleading”, he said.
NEW DELHI-India’s Prime Minister i is facing a revolt within his Hindu nationalist party by senior leaders questioning his leadership style after the recent debacle in state elections.
“The letter penned by BJP party elders reflects what many within the BJP have said in private, but were unwilling to articulate publicly”, said Milan Vaishnav of Carnegie Endowment for worldwide Peace. The Home Minister is said to be in favour of examination and analysis of what the veterans have said and that decisions be taken for the overall good. “We could have campaigned in a more strategical way to reach out larger masses”, said Tewari.
He said the party not projecting a local leader against Nitish Kumar during the Bihar elections led to its dismal performance. BJP sources said the party was likely to engage a few of the leaders who in a Diwali eve statement had said the party was “emasculated” under the current dispensation and had rejected the official position that the Bihar defeat was a “collective responsibility”. Dismissing the Bihar poll debacle effect on BJP’s Bengal unit, Sinha said, “Each state election is different”.
Parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu was quoted as telling journalists in Bangalore that the BJP would “take note” of the “views and concerns” raised by Advani and the others.
Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, said, the Bihar electoral defeat will increase the noise level within the BJP and impact intraparty politics.
“It shows that those who would have appropriated credit if the Party had won are bent on shrugging off responsibility for the disastrous showing in Bihar”, it added.
An early sign of placating the BJP’s elders emerged in a statement from Nitin Gadkari that recanted his earlier call for “stringent action” amid continuing sniper attacks on the leadership following the Bihar poll outcome. “Undoubtedly, the technique of the Grand Alliance (JDU-RJD-Congress) has been proved to be higher than ours”.
He also pointed out that the BJP had lost elections in the past, too. Now, to push through those reforms, the party needs to win the control of the upper house, which is elected by state assemblies.
Naidu said “winning and loosing happens, we never held any individual or for that matter group of individuals responsible for these defeats”. “It has by no means been the tradition of the party to blame any particular person for the failure of the party”, he stated.
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Encouraged by the statement, several other BJP leaders from Bihar also chose to speak their hearts out.
