M A I N   N E W S

BJP “big three” train guns on Jagmohan
Rajiv Sharma
Tribune News Service

Four BJP MPs of Delhi (left to right) Sahib Singh Verma, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Madan Lal Khurana and Lal Bihari Tiwari talking to the media outside the Prime Minister's residence on the outcome of their meeting with the Prime Minister in New Delhi on Saturday. — PTI photo

New Delhi, September 8
The “big three” of BJP’s politics in Delhi — Mr Madan Lal Khurana, Mr Sahib Singh Verma and Mr Vijay Kumar Malhotra — today made Union Tourism Minister Jagmohan the focus of their attack during their meeting with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The Prime Minister is understood to have admitted that Mr Jagmohan had dented the BJP’s prospects for the coming Delhi municipal elections and told the three Delhi veterans that he would “very soon” call a meeting with BJP stalwart L.K. Advani and party president K. Jana Krishnamurthy to chalk out a winning strategy for the local poll.

Well-placed political sources said the angry Delhi BJP trio (who were accompanied by a low-profile colleague Lal Bihari Tiwari) minced no words in telling the Prime Minister that the shifting of Mr Jagmohan from Urban Development to Tourism Ministry was the government’s “political compulsion”.

They told the Prime Minister that reports in the media that Mr Jagmohan had been shifted out of the Urban Development Ministry on their insistence had severely marred their image before the electorate as such reports gave rise to speculations of their nexus with the builders’ mafia.

Mr Khurana, Mr Verma and Mr Malhotra were quite forthcoming in their talks and at one point they laid out before Mr Vajpayee the BJP’s manifesto of 1997 elections in which the party had promised to regularise a large number of unatuhorised colonies in Delhi. They told the Prime Minister that the acts of the “Demolition Man” (Mr Jagmohan) had been contrary to what the party had promised to the Delhiites.

They asked Mr Vajpayee what was more important to him: winning in the elections or demolition drives.

The trio cited today’s humiliating defeat of the BJP’s student wing in Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections in which the ABVP could manage only one out of four office bearers’ seats. They warned that same or worse results were in the offing for the party for the Delhi municipal elections, due in February next, if the party did not change its policies immediately.

The Prime Minister is understood to have agreed with their assessment and said he would be personally making sure that the BJP strategy for Delhi’s municipal elections was chalked out at the earliest as these were no ordinary municipal elections.

Mr Khurana and Mr Malhotra were the most vociferous among the four leaders who attended today’s meeting with the Prime Minister. Mr Verma was unusually quiet, sources said.

Though their nearly hour-long meeting took place at lunch time, there was no lunch as the Prime Minister skips lunch and takes only soup. The leaders were, however, served soup. Interestingly, Mr Verma skips dinner and takes only lunch.