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ShareNew Delhi: A day after Arun Shourie rattled the BJP top brass with a scathing attack, it was Vasundhara Raje's turn to show defiance. At a meeting with party president Rajnath Singh on Tuesday, she refused to accept his diktat to resign as leader of opposition in the Rajasthan assembly; instead, she asked him for an explanation for the demand.
There was more bad news for the beleaguered party leadership. Its most prominent face in the northeast, Kiren Rijiju of Arunachal Pradesh, quit the BJP on Tuesday and is poised to join the Congress before the forthcoming assembly elections in the state.
And from the RSS stable came an unexpected salvo. Former Sangh chief KS Sudarshan gave a new twist to the Jinnah controversy rocking the BJP by describing the founder of Pakistan as a man with "many facets". He said in a statement from Bhopal that at one stage, Jinnah was with Lokmanya Tilak and committed to a unified India.
The continuing turmoil in the party is taking its toll. Morale is at rock bottom and as one person put it, "We feel like headless chickens. No one is in charge and we don't know what to do."
That the party is sinking deeper and deeper into crisis was evident from the fact that the leadership stayed its hand in taking immediate action against Shourie. It seems Shourie's criticism has struck a chord in the rank and file with workers, junior office bearers and some MPs privately complimenting him for being bold enough to voice their own thoughts about Rajnath Singh's poor leadership and the state of drift in the BJP. Rajnath is apparently quite shaken by the murmurs in the party and after Vasundhara's snub on Tuesday, he can't seem to summon the will to give Shourie the Jaswant Singh treatment. For the moment, he has merely asked Shourie to explain his comments.
The BJP president has been hit the hardest by the continuing storm. His authority stands eroded as does his credibility and some dark prophets in the party are predicting an early exit for him from the post of president. He is due to demit office at the end of the year.
Significantly, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is in the capital and will stay for three days. He is expected to meet with a cross-section of workers and leaders of the BJP. But few are pinning their hopes on Bhagwat. RSS spokesman Ram Madhav made it quite clear that the Sangh has no intention of intervening in what it considers an "internal matter" of the BJP. "I want to say this clearly that it is not the job of the RSS. The RSS would provide help and advice to the BJP but the political work has to be managed by them," he said.
