New Delhi, June 13
Rajnath Singh, BJP president, on Saturday tried without much success to put a lid on dissenting cacophonic voices in his party by threatening disciplinary action against those “sharing with the media any views or inputs outside the party forums.”
But the momentum against BJP’s attempt to paper over its defeat has become so powerful that even as Singh was reading out to the media his solemn resolve to act strictly and impartially against the deviants, a TV news channel was running verbatim the five-page acerbic letter of the BJP vice-president Yashwant Sinha addressed to none other than Singh himself.
Rajnath said, “Henceforth, all party leaders and functionaries should refrain from formally or informally sharing any views
or inputs outside the party forums such as the media, about internal deliberations that might negatively impact the image of the party, failing which they will invite disciplinary proceedings.”
He said recent statements of some our party leaders on various media platforms appear to have created an impression in some quarters that the party leadership is in disarray and is not analysing the reasons behind the defeat. “This is far from the truth. The BJP leadership stands united and is already in the process of analysing the outcome of the results,” he said, adding that the entire process will culminate in a detailed ‘Chintan Baithak’ after the Parliament session ends in the month of August. Sources in the BJP said following the footsteps of his senior colleague Jaswant Singh, Sinha too had e-mailed his letter to all the members of the Core Group and deliberately leaked it to the media.
But for all Rajnath’s efforts to play down the growing dissensions in the BJP, the current trend in party is to fight it out in the media. Thus, Kanchan Gupta, who drafted the BJP manifesto along with Murli Manohar Joshi, also launched a virulent attack against Advani’s Man Friday Sudheendra Kulkarni.
Enumerating the causes for defeat, Kanchan Gupta wrote on a website, “The moral responsibility for the defeat is entirely that of those who led from the front. If they failed to enthuse voters, it is because they did not come across as inspirational leaders.”
