The BJP has asked those leaders not to embarrass the party further and to discuss the issues in private, the sources said.
Advertisement
At the identical time, BJP’s Delhi MP Manoj Tiwari, who had campaigned in Bihar extensively, blamed the party’s technique for the defeat and Ara MP S R Singh echoed the demand that accountability had to be fastened.
The Union minister said reports in a section of the media, indicating that he suggested that disciplinary action be initiated against them are absolutely incorrect and misleading.
The BJP old guard’s statement, which had not named anyone but wanted accountability to be fixed, was seen to be targeting party president Amit Shah. Gadkari, however, maintained that the Bihar setback was a collective responsibility.
Reffering to the party’s dismal showing in Bihar, Sinha said it would not spoil the prospects of the party in Bengal.
Addressing the issue of “intolerance” in India in United Kingdom, Prime Minister Modi had earlier said that India was the land of Gandhi and Buddha, and intolerance would not be tolerated at any cost.
USA founding father Thomas Jefferson once said a “little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world, as storms in the physical”.
So when Amit Shah made his remarks about crackers bursting in Pakistan or when Narendra Modi raised the false bogey of quotas for Muslims, it is entirely possible that they were imagining a ground reality that did not exist on the scale that would have worked for them.
According to s statement released by the quartet: “To say that everyone is responsible for the defeat in Bihar is to ensure that no one is responsible”.
“The leaders have not said anything against Modi”.
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. “We will not accept anything that goes against our social values”, Prime Minister Modi had said in his statement.
Meanwhile, the party veterans- Advani, Joshi and Yashwant Sinha- continued to hold deliberations, a day after finance minister Arun Jaitley met Joshi.
Remember Indira Gandhi and her authoritarianism, which had to bite the dust when elections were held after 21 months of Emergency, which she had imposed to suppress the resistance led by the iconic Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s.
“This formality is now over”, JD-U state president Vashsisht Narain Singh said. Stating that Bihar election results would not have any effect on national politics, Naidu said state elections are for electing Chief Ministers, not Prime Minister.
Advertisement
It also works when a riot, like the one in Muzaffarnagar, has already polarised the state, as it had during the 2014 general election when the BJP swept Uttar Pradesh. A party leader said the BJP had forced him to move against his wishes to Begusarai from Nawada for Giriraj Singh in last year’s Lok Sabha elections. Those same Biharis backed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies last May, encouraged by promises to create jobs and end corruption, helping the BJP become the first party in a generation to win a majority in India’s lower house of parliament.
