M A I N   N E W S

Top bosses snub Raje loyalists
Faraz Ahmad
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 14
The BJP’s leader in the Rajasthan assembly, Vasundhra Raje, perceived to be a protégé of senior party leader LK Advani, openly raised a banner of revolt against the RSS and party president Rajnath Singh by sending a delegation of over 50 MLAs to Delhi to express solidarity with the former CM and “challenged” the BJP high command to remove her.

Despite the legislators’ protest, sources said Raje had been asked to meet Rajnath tomorrow in Delhi, perhaps indicating a hardening of the BJP high command’s resolve to replace her.

The MLAs, led by BJP chief whip in the Rajasthan assembly Rajendra Singh Rathore and Kiran Maheshwari, trooped to Rajnath’s residence this afternoon and sought to meet him. Initially the latter’s staff appeared disinclined to allow them inside the house but, as luck would have it, Nepalese Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala arrived there with a prior appointment to meet Rajnath. To avoid a spectacle the MLAs were later allowed inside the compound.

As soon as Koirala left they surrounded Rajnath and claimed Raje enjoyed the support of 62 of the 78 BJP legislators in the state assembly.

The legislators later said they had told Rajnath the party’s move to remove Vasundhra had not been approved by Advani and it was only he (Rajnath) and Jaswant Singh who were behind the plan to replace her. They said Rajnath then left for Advani’s house without giving them any assurance and they also headed for the same destination. When not allowed inside Advani’s home they sat on the sidewalk outside for some time, the MLAs added.

Having failed to meet Advani they eventually left behind a copy of their memorandum.

Later, Rathore and Maheshwari said: “We, the 62 MLAs from Rajasthan, have come to tell the central leaders that our leader is and will continue to be Vasundhara. We want to warn them without her the BJP will be nothing in Rajasthan. We don’t want a change in leadership and want Raje to continue as legislative party leader”.

Raje’s supporters tried to portray any attempt to replace her as a “design to weaken Advani by striking at his camp followers”. They also denied she played a role in the BJP’s defeat in first the state assembly polls and later in the general elections, blaming the fiasco on a “coterie of Vasundhra baiters in the RSS/BJP who were working against her and the party”.