NEW DELHI: BJP leader L K Advani on Thursday admitted that people were “disappointed” with the party and appeared to be hitting out at party chief Nitin Gadkari as he said the campaign against corruption had been hurt due to induction of an ousted BSP leader facing graft charges.
He said the BJP had not risen to the occasion at a time when there was anger against the UPA government over various scams.
“If people are today angry with the UPA government, they are also disappointed with us. The situation …calls for introspection,” the BJP veteran wrote in his blog, the first on organisational affairs after the party’s National Executive where the differences between leaders was in focus.
“… when these days media-persons attack the UPA government for its string of scams, but at the same time regret that the BJP-led NDA is not rising to the occasion, I as a former pressman myself, feel they are reflecting public opinion correctly,” he said.
Observing that the mood within the party “these days is not upbeat”, he said, “the results in Uttar Pradesh (assembly polls), the manner in which the party welcomed BSP ministers who were removed by Mayawati ji on charges of corruption, the party’s handling of Jharkhand and Karnataka, all these events have undermined the party’s campaign against corruption.”
The criticism with regard to welcoming of BSP minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, an accused in NRHM scam, appears to be a reference to Gadkari who was instrumental in the induction before the controversy forced Kushwaha to distance himself from the party.
He noted that the BJP has a sizable contingent of MPs in Parliament as against the niggardly two seats in 1984, that the party’s performance in the two Houses of Parliament under Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley has been “excellent” and the party is in power in as many as nine states today. But, he quickened to add that this “is no compensation for the lapses committed”.
In an apparent reference to media focus on differences between BJP leaders during the party’s National Executive meet in Mumbai, he said while politicians are generally critical of media persons, it is rare that media men themselves ridicule their own fraternity for indulging in political criticism “not because it is justified but because even while realising that the criticism is uninformed and superficial, the write ups do add up to lazy copy.” (PTI)