The Hindu : National : Suresh Mehta all set to quit BJP

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Thursday, Dec 06, 2007
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National

Suresh Mehta all set to quit BJP

Manas Dasgupta

Blames Advani for impasse

No logic in continuing in a party where I have no voice: Mehta
It is Sonia who first provoked Modi: BJP sources

MANDVI (Kutch district): The former Gujarat Chief Minister, Suresh Mehta, who has raised his voice against Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is all set to quit the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Mr. Mehta has spent his entire political career spanning over four decades in the party. Mr. Mehta, who hails from this coastal town in the border district of Kutch, said he would announce his resignation in a couple of days — most certainly before the first phase of polling to the Assembly on December 11.

While two other veteran rebel leaders, Keshubhai Patel and Kashiram Rana, have made it clear that they will not quit the party — but have “blessed” the dissidents in the fray — Mr. Mehta said he did not see any logic in his continuing in a party where he had no voice.

Mr. Mehta had been complaining to the BJP central leadership against Mr. Modi’s style of functioning, but to no avail.

He blamed the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani, for the impasse in the party, saying that he had been protecting Mr. Modi all the time.

As Congress president Sonia Gandhi drew huge crowds at her election meetings, Mr. Modi changed tack from the soft “development plank” to the “Hindutva” hardline. Like Ms. Gandhi, who has been targeting him, the Chief Minister too has started attacking her, asking questions whether he should “seek her permission” even to eliminate terrorists.

Mr. Modi’s reference, at the Mangrol meeting in south Gujarat on Tuesday, was to the killing, in an alleged fake encounter, of Sohrabuddin Sheikh.

The BJP sources claimed that Ms. Gandhi was the first to “provoke” Mr. Modi when she re-opened the issue of 2002 communal riots at her Jamanpada rally on December 1.

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