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BJP to ignore Sinha, Shourie criticism

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: Reacting to the almost daily dose of criticism of the BJP by the former Union Ministers, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, a senior leader said here on Monday: “We decided it was best to ignore this.”

One view that has emerged in the BJP is that leaders who have held Cabinet berths and high positions should realise that there are thousands of people in the party who have got no recognition for their years of work for the organisation.

“Mr. Sinha and Mr. Shourie are depending on our sense of decency not to respond. But the fact is that within the first one year that Mr. Sinha joined the BJP he was made legislature party leader in the Bihar Assembly and then after his name figured in the ‘hawala’ scandal, he was made Bihar State party president. When the party was in power between 1998 and 2004, he was Finance Minister and then External Affairs Minister. What more could the party have given him?”

It was also pointed out that when Mr. Sinha was made in-charge of political affairs in Karnataka, he hardly paid a visit to the State, let alone do any work for the party.

As for the series of three articles Mr. Shourie recently wrote in a daily, party leaders admitted that it was thinly veiled criticism of the BJP and its functioning although the author claimed that the pieces were about the functioning of political parties in India in general. “Only a dozen BJP leaders and some journalists who cover the party would have understood what he meant,” one leader remarked.

Brainstorming session

Meanwhile, the party is getting ready for the three-day chintan baithak (brainstorming session) from August 17 in Mumbai, where all issues related to its defeat in the Lok Sabha elections and the events that followed will be discussed behind closed doors.

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