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| BJP - ‘Party with a difference’.....! | | Comes out with different colour over 'expelled MLAs' | | Kunal Shrivatsa
JAMMU, Jan 14: Even as Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) hardly misses an opportunity to boast 'party with a difference' tag and harping on that 'we as a political group keeps intact high moral grounds come what may' but the decision to revoke expulsion of five out of its seven MLAs, who were expelled from the primary membership of BJP for alleged cross-voting in the Legislative Council elections in April 2011 has somewhat nullify assertions of the saffron party.
In what could be described as taking a U-turn on the issue, the BJP High Command today finally decided to grant re-entry to five of its legislators MLA Domana Bharat Bhushan, MLA RS Pura Prof Gharu Ram, MLA Reasi Baldev Sharma, MLA Hiranagar Durga Dass and MLA Bani Master Lal Chand into the party fold.
However, the other two BJP legislators MLA Jammu West Prof Chaman Lal Gupta and MLA Basohli Jagdish Sapolia were not so fortunate to regain entry.
The duo has been left out as if only they have committed the 'sin' of cross voting while their other colleagues were punished mistakenly.
While reacting to the announcement few BJP insiders ridiculed the decision of the party High Command and said that a senior leader like Prof Chaman Lal Gupta has been dumped without any reason or rhyme.
"If Prof Chaman Lal and Jagdish Sapolia have been indicted so should be others who were facing serious charges of crossing the floor of the House," sources said.
"Why different set of yardsticks were applied for revoking the expulsion of the five MLAs while leaving the other two when all of them were expelled on the same issue," they added.
Some of them even dared to say that the issue was completely mishandled as in the absence of a valid proof against the group of seven MLAs; the party should not have taken harsh decision of expelling them and even if the seven MLAs were shown the door, their re-induction should have been avoided.
"At the first instance the party MLAs should have been left scot free after issuing them a stern warning but if the Party High Command thought that their action brought bad repute to the organization then today's decision hardly makes any sense," a party insider said.
It may be recalled that seven BJP MLAs including Prof Chaman Lal Gupta and Jagdish Sapolia were expelled from primary membership of the party for six years for cross-voting in the Legislative Council elections held on April 13, 2011.
Due to cross voting of the BJP MLAs, the coalition of National Conference and Congress managed to bag five out of six seats for which the elections were held.
Putting party in an embarrassing position, three of the BJP MLAs voted in favour of the NC candidates while other four voted for their arch rival Congress.
In the process, the official candidate of BJP Thakur Ranjit Singh had to eat a humble pie as he was polled only four votes despite the fact that party had 11 members in the State Assembly thereby making it quite evident that seven BJP legislators had cross-voted in violation of the party whip. |
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