Advani bid to bridge party chasm: Introspect,dont point fingers

The BJP on Sunday sought to put behind the post-election internal bickering that had led to a vicious power...

The BJP on Sunday sought to put behind the post-election internal bickering that had led to a vicious power struggle among second-rung leaders,even as senior leader L K Advani called for honest introspection but warned against any finger-pointing.

We should not be found wanting in honest introspection. But introspection is different from finger-pointing. Let us treat the outcome of the elections as behoves a mature and highly resilient party, Advani said in his concluding remarks of the partys two-day national executive,after party general secretary Arun Jaitley came under a severe attack from some party colleagues on Saturday.

Advani added that leaders and workers should feel that there is an internal mechanism where even critical views can be placed. The only constraint on the participants in this exercise,which is an important part of our culture of discipline,is that they should not air their critical views in public, he added.

After our campaign appeared to be picking up,people expected us to win. When we lost,the people were disappointed,exactly the way they get disappointed whenever Sachin Tendulkar gets out in his 90s, said Advani,an avid cricket buff. Sushma Swaraj read out a poem suggesting that there was no cause for so much of despondency even after the defeat.

The party,meanwhile,constituted a three-member panel headed by vice-president Bal Apte to study the reasons for the partys defeat. Apte,who has also been entrusted with the task of suggesting corrective steps after going through the three letters by Arun Shourie,Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha sent to t5 he party chief,would be assisted by P Muralidhar Rao. Close to 20 party leaders are being sent to various states to study the reasons for the partys debacle.

Advani himself announced his decision to travel to various states to enthuse the party cadre. I have decided to tour the entire country in the months to come. I shall be visiting all the states,and more than one place in some of the bigger states, Advani said. With rival Congress preparing for a generational shift in the organisation,Advani also asked the party to be prepared to groom third,fourth and fifth generation of leaders in the party.

Arun Shourie and Jaswant Singh,who on Saturday demanded accountability in the party,remained largely silent on Sunday. Issues like centralisation of partys decision-making process,raised by Shourie,were,however,raised by Bihars kisan leader Hukum Deo Narayan Yadav who said that a class of leaders in Delhi had always everything going for them.

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If they fail to become ministers,they become Lok Sabha members,and when they fail there too,they become Rajya Sabha members, he said,to the applause of many.

Yadav,along with Gopinath Munde and Sushil Modi demanded quota within quota in Womens Reservations Bill. The concluding day of the meet remained largely incident free,save for sharp exchanges between Shahnawaz Hussain and Maneka Gandhi. Hussain said that he would have preferred to go to the party president instead of writing letters. Maneka accused him of leaking party affairs to the media,a claim that was contested by him. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi joined in supporting Hussain.