The Hindu : Kalyan Singh rejoins BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 04, 2004

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Kalyan Singh rejoins BJP

By Neena Vyas

The Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, with the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh, in New Delhi on Tuesday. - PTI

NEW DELHI, FEB. 3. The former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh, "came home'' today merging his Rashtriya Kranti Party (RKP) with the Bharatiya Janata Party even as the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, announced that the battle for the 80 Lok Sabha seats in U.P. would be fought by the party "under the `marg darshan' (guidance)'' of Mr. Singh.

The chapter that began four years ago with Mr. Singh's expulsion from the BJP in the aftermath of the 1999 Lok Sabha elections has come to a close. Senior party leaders had then alleged that Mr. Singh, then Chief Minister, had sabotaged from within and helped drastically cut the number of seats won by the BJP.

Today Mr. Singh announced that he was now a member of the BJP, that his party stood dissolved and had merged with the BJP. Two RKP Ministers in the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government — Rajvir Singh and Kusum Rai — have resigned in Lucknow and the formality of withdrawing support to the Yadav Government would be completed soon.

The "homecoming'' was announced at a joint press conference addressed by Mr. Naidu, and Mr. Singh. The party general secretary, Pramod Mahajan, who had gone to Lucknow this morning and had brought Mr. Singh back with him on a special flight, was present, and had reason to be pleased for this mission accomplished.

Immediately after arrival here, Mr. Singh met the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for just under half-an-hour. Apparently, he acknowledged Mr. Vajpayee's leadership of not only the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance but also of the whole country as "unparalleled,'' a point he later made emphatically at the press conference. He then met the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, his old mentor.

After that he drove to the central party office, where he was received by Mr. Naidu and the party's U.P. president, Vinay Katiyar, and `prabhari' (in-charge of political affairs), Kalraj Mishra. Later, the Agriculture Minister and former U.P. Chief Minister, Rajnath Singh, joined in the celebrations for which a large number of party MPs from U.P. had come. Some slogans were raised hailing Mr. Singh. And late in the evening, he called on the Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi.

"I am enjoying my homecoming,'' said Mr. Singh, while reading out a one-page statement that extolled the virtues of Mr. Vajpayee as a person "under whose leadership the country was destined to touch record heights of progress and development." He said he had made up his mind to "come back'' after Mr. Vajpayee had greeted him warmly when on December 24 last year in Lucknow he had met him to extend birthday greetings.

Welcoming Mr. Singh into the party fold, Mr. Naidu said that "except for the last four years,'' he had all along been committed to the party and its ideology. As if to prove this, when Mr. Singh was asked about his views on the "foreign origin'' of the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, he simply asserted that the party's views were his, although it was a question he had answered differently when he was the RKP chief. Asked about the abusive words he had used against the BJP leadership in 1999, Mr. Singh said: "What is past is past" (`jo chala gaya so chala gaya'). Now I am ready to give my life for the BJP and its leaders.''

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