BJP tells Murli Manohar Joshi not to contest Lok Sabha polls

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 26

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Veteran leader Murli Manohar Joshi has said that he has been asked not to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha election.

Joshi said while he was keen to contest, he had been asked not to contest polls from Kanpur.

Joshi was asked to vacate his Varanasi seat for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 and shifted to Kanpur.

According to reports, Joshi said he was asked by party general secretary (organisation) Ramlal not to contest the election. A message doing the rounds on social media, reportedly by Joshi to voters of Kanpur, claimed that he had been asked to stay out of the poll fray.

Till now, six party veterans above 75, including patriarch LK Advani, have been benched by the saffron party.

So far, Joshi has not given any official statement to the media.

Joshi is 85 and like Advani is part of the BJP’s margdarshak mandal, which has not met even once since its formation in 2014

After Patna MP Shatrughan Sinha was replaced by Ravi Shankar Prasad for the coming poll, he had called the party “a two-man Army” accusing it of not treating its veterans well.

Sinha, in a series of tweets, had said the treatment meted out to Advani, who has been dropped from Gandhinagar in favour of Shah, and other senior leaders such as Yashwant Sinha, Murli Manohar Joshi and Arun Shourie, “smacked of ingratitude”.