NEW DELHI, 21 June 2004 — Laying speculations about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s future to rest, BJP President M. Venkaiah Naidu said yesterday: “There is no proposal to change the leadership (in Gujarat) at this juncture. There is no proposal to change the chief minister of Gujarat at this juncture.”
He announced this after the BJP Parliamentary Board’s meeting, which was called to review the Lok Sabha poll outcome and the Gujarat issue.
Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s earlier comments that the BJP’s defeat in the Lok Sabha poll was due to the Gujarat carnage and that the party had made a mistake in not removing him from office, had necessitated this meeting.
Held at Naidu’s residence, the meeting was attended by Vajpayee, former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, BJP general secretaries Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan and Arun Jaitley and senior leaders like Jaswant Singh, among others.
Within a week of having taken a strong line against Modi, Vajpayee appears to have suddenly softened. He literally dismissed the question of Modi’s dismissal from office by describing it as a thing of the past.
The change in Vajpayee’s attitude is related to the coming assembly elections in Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh. A majority of the Sangh Parivar workers are against Modi’s dismissal.
The BJP is not interested in antagonizing them just when it needs their help in its campaign drive for the elections.
