Uma Bharti confuses UP BJP workers

Excited Bharatiya Janata Party workers looking forward to a strong backward caste leader joining their ranks were in for a disappointment after meeting former BJP leader Uma Bharti, who was rumoured to be returning to the party.

Party workers crowding around her in Lucknow and Ayodhya, where she visited the makeshift Ram temple, had hoped she would announce her return to the BJP her visit to Lucknow on Saturday, but in the end, Bharti chose to give out cryptic replies.

“I would prefer to join the National Democratic Alliance [a coalition led by the BJP]] as an independent entity rather than join the BJP as an office-bearer,” Uma told reporters, “But Advani ji and Nitin Gadkari want me to join the party (BJP).

She the confounded the confusion further by saying, “For the time being, I plan to remain apolitical.”

The BJP is desperate to project a credible alternative to current Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati in time for the assembly elections, due in 2012. Many in the BJP believe that Uma Bharti, who was a former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, is one such person who can hold her own against Mayawati. But her latest statements have only dashed the hopes of the BJP workers.

This posturing was in complete contrast to her recent statements that she had talked to senior BJP leader LK Advani about rejoining the party with an important role in Uttar Pradesh, and had even proposed to contest elections from this state.

“I was talking about contesting the Lok Sabha election in 2014 from UP, not the Vidhan Sabha (assembly) election in 2012,” she said by way of clarification. Asked about whether the BJP planned to project her as a chief ministerial candidate, she quipped: “This is the biggest joke of 2010!”

But the feisty leader did not lose the opportunity to hit out at her old opponent, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, also a former MP chief minister, and at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his purported remarks on Hindu terror.

“Rahul should stop taking notes on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (a affiliate of the BJP) from Digvijay Singh. If he follows a teacher like him (Digvijay), his political future is doomed. He should take notes from me on the RSS ,” she remarked.

Reacting to Rahul equating the RSS with the banned radical outfit, the Students Islamic Movement of India, she ascribed it to the young Congress leader’s “lack of proper education and understanding”.

“The Congress has been instigating terror in this country and when their leaders fell to terror attacks, they went around with their photographs to get votes,” she said. “The Congress has been playing votebank politics on terrorism.”