IANS
PATNA, NOVEMBER 12
Actor and BJP’s Lok Sabha member Shatrughan Sinha on Thursday said that the party should not run away from fixing responsibility in the Bihar debacle and warned party leaders not to treat him like a Rajya Sabha member with no support base.
“...now that the (Bihar assembly elections) verdict is out and we’re saddened by this humiliating defeat, we should not run away from fixing responsibility,” Sinha tweeted.
The Bollywood veteran’s comment came after the BJP old guard, including L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, on Tuesday demanded a thorough review of the debacle and said it cannott be done by those who were responsible (for the electoral defeat).
Sinha, a former union minister, also warned party leaders not to treat him like a Rajya Sabha member, and reminded them that he has a support base.
“I am not a Rajya Sabha MP. I’ve come through the support of the masses and (have) won two Lok Sabha elections with record margins. I have a support base,” he said.
Sinha said despite his sincerity, efforts and intentions, he was kept away from campaigning in the Bihar assembly elections.
“My friends, voters and supporters were let down,” he said. Sinha said he never wanted to be the chief minister of Bihar, but insisted the election results would have been different if he was allowed to campaign in the state. He reiterated he had not worked against the BJP in any way. There have been rumours that the party might take disciplinary action against him for alleged “anti-party” activities.
After Bihar debacle, Amit Shah postpones BJP’s poll campaign in Bengal
After the electoral debacle in Bihar, the BJP has pushed back its campaign for next year’s assembly polls in West Bengal, with party president Amit Shah skipping his proposed “Utthan Divas” public meeting in Kolkata on November 30.
Shah will now address public meetings in West Bengal late in December and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwarts will hit the state in January.
The BJP’s national leadership said the decision to postpone the events was made before the Bihar poll results. But sources in the BJP said leaders wanted bickering within the party after the electoral defeat to subside before the push for West Bengal begins.
The BJP also expects to buy more time before hitting “poll mode” in the state, the sources said.
“The decision to postpone our national president’s public meeting at Maidan was taken on November 6. The state leadership attended the meeting in Delhi much before the Bihar poll results came in. We will not leave any stones unturned for West Bengal and there is no question of going slow,” a BJP leader, who did not want to be named, said from Delhi.
As in the past couple of years, Amit Shah was listed as the main speaker for the Utthan Divas public meeting in Kolkata. He will now visit West Bengal late in December and address two rallies in Kolkata and Siliguri, sources said.
In January, Prime Minister Modi and other senior leaders such as Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley will hold a series of rallies in West Bengal.
Kailash Vijayvargiya, the BJP observer for the state, will hold a rally in West Midnapore to test the waters before Shah’s visit.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi and chief ministers of Delhi, West Bengal, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh will attend the November 20 oath taking of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in an event which is being touted as the beginning of opposition unity against the BJP.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda will also attend the event along with Assam’s Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. So will former chief ministers Babulal Marandi and Hemant Soren of Jharkhand and INLD leader Abhay Chautala from Haryana.
“We have decided to invite all leaders opposed to the BJP to attend the ceremony,” Janata Dal-United (JD-U) spokesperson Ajay Alok said here on Thursday.
JD-U general secretary K.C. Tyagi said all the senior leaders opposed to the BJP’s brand of politics would come together in the first major show of opposition unity since Narendra Modi became prime minister in May 2014.
“It will be a new beginning of opposition unity,” he said.
The Grand Alliance led by Nitish Kumar -- who will take oath as chief minister for a third straight time -- also includes the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of Lalu Prasad and the Congress. It crushed the BJP and its allies, winning 178 of the 243 assembly seats.
The chief ministers expected to attend are Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party, Uttar Pradesh), Naveen Patnaik (BJD, Odisha), Arvind Kejriwal (AAP, Delhi) and Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress, West Bengal). Lalu Prasad, whose RJD is the single largest party in the new Bihar house, and JD-U president Sharad Yadav will be the main guests at the event.
