New Delhi, July 09: Backroom bickering in the BJP is now loud enough to resound in Parliament.
Opposition leader L.K. Advani has sidelined chief dissenters Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Jaswant Singh even at the cost of watering down the party’s response to major policy pronouncements.
In the discussion on the budget, scheduled to commence in the two Houses on July 13, Sinha and Jaswant – former finance ministers – and Shourie – a former World Bank economist and the party’s economic expert – have been excluded from presenting the BJP’s perspective.
At a parliamentary party meeting on Tuesday, deputy leader Sushma Swaraj reportedly said Murli Manohar Joshi would initiate the discussion in the Lok Sabha. In the Upper House, S.S. Ahluwalia, a relative stranger to economic affairs, has been given the honour.
The trio has clearly been punished for charging Advani and Arun Jaitley with “putting a premium on (Lok Sabha polls) defeat”. They had questioned Advani’s decision to continue as the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha and his chief election strategist Arun Jaitley’s elevation as the LoP, Rajya Sabha.
Through various letters and discussions, the three MPs had demanded accountability for the party’s poll debacle.
It looks like they are paying a price for it. During the previous budgets, they used to be invited to Advani’s official chamber in Parliament. Advani would go to the House while Sinha, Shourie and Jaswant would watch the presentation on TV. After the speech, Advani would return to his room for a detailed discussion on the budget.
Either Sinha or Shourie would draft a short statement for Advani as well as a detailed response of the BJP on the budget. The three leaders would then present the BJP’s official response to the budget before the media.
But the circumstances are very different now. On the day the budget was presented, none of the three leaders heard from Advani. They were not even present at a meeting convened by Advani to discuss the budget.
That meeting was attended by leaders such as Swaraj, Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, M. enkaiah Naidu and Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Swaraj reportedly called up Sinha to address a press conference later but he is said to have refused.
However, Swaraj denied anything was amiss. “No one is angry. I spoke to Yashwant Sinha on the budget,” she said.
Jaswant has already gone off to his native village in Rajasthan. He probably pre-empted the extent to which the parliamentary party can exclude him after his outburst at a core committee meeting last month.
He had written a letter demanding to know if there was a correlation between “inaam aur parinaam (performance and reward)”. The statement was naturally perceived to be an attack on Advani and Jaitley, both of whom supervised the elections and then went on to become LoPs. After this, Jaswant could not have expected Advani to rise above the mundane.
The onerous task of articulating the Opposition’s position on the budget has thus fallen on Joshi and Ahluwalia.
For those who have voted to accord the status of the main opposition party to the BJP, the only hope is that they find credible speech-writers.
–Agencies