Thaindian News

New Delhi, Aug 24 (IANS) Stoking fresh trouble in the crisis-ridden Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), party leader Arun Shourie Monday described it as a “kati patang” (adrift kite). The party has indicated it would act against him too.
“It (BJP) is in my view a kati patang,” Shourie told the NDTV television channel, triggering furious responses from a party that is already reeling under a crisis sparked by former cabinet minister Jaswant Singh’s sacking.

Shourie, already sidelined in the BJP, also told NDTV that BJP president Rajnath Singh was a “Humpty Dumpty” and urged the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological parent, to stay out of policy decisions.

Commenting on the Jaswant Singh episode, Shourie asserted without naming anyone that there were certain people in the party who have brought about this situation and the party “to this path”, and that “these are the people who are hurting the party’s interest”.

Shourie also said there were leaders in the party who have been “planting stories in the press for the last five years”.

He said raising issues even within the party forum was being described as indiscipline, and referred to a letter he had written to Rajnath Singh, the contents of which are not in public domain.

“See, I keep raising this issue with you, you are my boss. I come to you again and again. I came to know you are also listening to your uncle, so I go to him too and I raise the issues. They all agree, you agree, you don’t do anything. In the end, I write a letter,” the former minister said, taunting the party.

His unexpected comments have added to the acute discomfiture of the BJP, which is facing one of its worst moments since it was defeated in the Lok Sabha election this year.

BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said Shourie’s remarks about the party and Rajnath Singh were shocking. “Some selfish writers are challenging the fighters. It is a temporary phase. The party will emerge stronger from all this,” Naqvi told IANS.

Another party spokesman, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, termed the remarks “completely unacceptable”, and said the party would take cognizance of what Shourie had spoken.

“He is sermonizing, he is angry,” Rudy added.

Shourie, however, found immediate support from Sudheendra Kulkarni, former advisor to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and BJP stalwart L.K. Advani, who quit the party Sunday.

Kulkarni has also spoken in support of Jaswant Singh, who was sacked from the party last week over a book authored by him in which he praised Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.