The Hindu : National : ``Vajpayee, Advani responsible for BJP's defeat''

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 14, 2004

National

National

``Vajpayee, Advani responsible for BJP's defeat''

NEW DELHI, JUNE 13. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad today blamed the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the former Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, for the party's debacle in the recent Lok Sabha polls and asked them to repent ``by taking political sanyas'' instead of holding Gujarat responsible.

Reacting sharply to Mr. Vajpayee's comment that the Gujarat riots were responsible for the poor show, the VHP's international general secretary, Praveen Togadia, told PTI over telephone from Ahmedabad that ``it was Muslims' appeasement which led to the BJP's defeat.''

Instead of blaming Gujarat, they should accept their `failure' and repent for `betraying' Hindus and take ``political sanyas,'' he said.

Insisting that the Gujarat riots did not affect the party's prospects, Mr. Togadia said had it been so, the BJP would not have got a two-third majority in the State and won in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

``The BJP outscored the Congress in appeasing the minority community. It got a `fatwa' issued from the Shahi Imam of Delhi and used the Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's photograph during the rath yatra. This alienated the party's core vote bank and they did not vote for the party,'' he said. The VHP vice-president, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, also criticised Mr. Vajpayee's view that not removing Mr. Modi after the riots in the State was ``a big mistake''.

He said the fate of the BJP would have been much worse if Mr. Modi had been removed at that stage. — PTI, UNI

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