The BJP cut a sorry figure when it took a full 48 hours to put the record straight and say that the multiple blasts in Ahmedabad and Bangalore were not a conspiracy hatched by the Congress but “an attack on the nation”.After dodging the press on Tuesday, a red-faced BJP finally fielded spokesperson Prakash Javdekar to clear the air, who referred to L K Advani’s statements during his Ahmedabad visit. “L K Advani has already said that it’s not a war against a state or a party; it’s an attack on the country,” Javdekar said.To a question on Sushma’s remarks, wherein she had alleged that the blasts were a “conspiracy to divert attention from the cash-for-votes scandal” and “an attempt to win over the Muslim votes which got divided after the pro-American deal pursued by the Government”, Javdekar said: “She has already clarified that it’s her personal view.” Asked if Sushma would be asked to apologise, Javdekar shot back: “She’s a senior leader of the party. Where’s the question of an apology?”Sushma, however, stuck to her remarks on Wednesday, saying that those were her “personal observations” and that “she had not referred to the Union Government or any party while making the allegations”. Gujarat CM Narendra Modi chose to make a course correction when he said terrorists were waging a “proxy war against the country”. “Ahmedabad blasts and Surat incidents are parts of same chain. It is not different from other terrorist attacks in the country,” Modi said in Surat. The statement will only put Sushma, considered to be one of the brightest second-rung BJP leaders, under pressure. Considering that the number of factions in the BJP has come to equal the number of second-rung leaders, it’s hardly a surprise that the party has just not been able to come up with a cogent response to any issue, after its victory in Gujarat.Troubled ParivarCash-for-vote: L K Advani and his team, including Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Sudheendra Kulkarni, saw a great opportunity to pin the Congress-led UPA Government on political corruption. Some leaders openly questioned the rationale of the move. Preparations for trust vote: When the “cadre-based party” was taken by surprise over the large-scale defections during the vote, charges were openly traded over prabharis (in-charge leaders) of the states that saw its MPs deserting the party. N-debate, truck with Left: While there were belated attempts to redraw the line drawn by the Arun Shourie-Yashwant Sinha duo, the BJP leadership was later faced with another problem due to two extraordinarily gifted functionaries. The first, who cut his teeth in the ABVP politics, and known for the gift of the gab, would have liked a clear right-of-the-centre position. The second, known as a wordsmith, would not have minded if the Right and the Left came together “for a cause”.Karnataka poll: If the BJP managed to wrest Karnataka from the Congress, it was due to Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Narendra Modi and Yashwant Sinha apart from solid work by B S Yedyurappa. After the results, however, there was heartburn in the party that solo posters claiming the credit for the victory appeared in Delhi.
