After Cabinet, Uma opts for sanyas from party, Lok Sabha

In the three-page resignation letter delivered personally to the Prime Minister’s Parliament Office at 12.30 pm, Uma Bharti expressed the desire to retire from politics, but said she would remain committed to the BJP parivar all her life. Copies of the letter were also delivered to Home Minister L.K Advani, outgoing BJP chief Kushabhau Thakre and his successor Bangaru Laxman, before she left to meet her spiritual guru in Vrindaban on Monday evening.

Uma wanted to be taken back in the Union Cabinet or be entrusted with an equally important assignment. She apparently wanted to head the Madhya Pradesh unit of the BJP, but party leaders instead put more faith in another backward leader, Vikram Varma. Her furstration and isolation is echoed in her resignation letter: “I broke my indefinite hunger strike three months ago because I felt the state BJP unit would not carry on the agitation after my arrest as it was busy with organisational polls”.

Uma seems to have become the first casualty of the ongoing tussle within the Sangh Parivar, as she was an active member of the saffron brigade which was feeling “suffocated” with the BJP abandoning its ideological planks like Ayodhya, abrogation of Article 370 and a Uniform Civil Code.

Other BJP leaders feel that Uma had resigned to chart an independent political course. Being a Lodh (backward caste), she had taken up the cause of a quota for the backwards within the 33 per cent reservation being mooted for women in Parliament and legislatures, in conflcit with her party’s stand. Her proactive approach brings her ideologically closer to another influencial Lodh leader, Kalyan Singh from Uttar Pradesh, who was sacked from the BJP for challenging the Prime Minister’s might, they claim.