BHOPAL, 21 November 2004 — Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharati, who was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party, has buckled. On Thursday, she sent a letter of apology to party President Lal Krishna Advani expressing her regrets for the embarrassment she caused the party when she walked out of a meeting in New Delhi on Nov. 10. However, at the same time she demanded that the party also apologize to her on some counts.
Bharati was suspended from the party and sacked as general secretary on a charge of indiscipline, after she defiantly walked out of the party meeting, demanding action against some BJP leaders in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Parliament) who she alleged were planting news against her in the media to undermine her. She criticized Advani for taking action against her. The meeting was being broadcast live on TV.
In the letter to Advani, she expressed her regrets for having hurt him by her action at the meeting of the central officials as she considered him not only her “political ideal but a father figure”.
“I am not writing this letter craving for revocation of my suspension. For, I have to rethink on the issue of revocation of suspension. This decision cannot be one-sided but a two-way affair,” Bharati said in the letter from somewhere en route to Kedarnath. Copies of the letter were circulated to the press by her aides.
According to Deepak Chopra, a close Advani aide, Bharati’s apology letter has been received. Just a couple of days back Bharati had written a letter to her supporters in Madhya Pradesh asking them to work for the party. “I think she would be back in the party before Nov. 30,” a senior leader said.
Her return to the party fold seems almost certain especially after her proclamation from the heights of the Himalayas that the BJP’s “unity” was paramount and she is ready to forgo Madhya Pradesh.
Confirming this, BJP sources said the timing will be decided by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, (RSS), and Advani. Advani was “advised” by RSS leaders, notably General-Secretary Madan Das Devi and “swadeshi ideologue” S. Gurumurthy, that “punishing” Bharati was not in the BJP’s long-term interest. Despite the reported opposition of leaders like M. Venkaiah Naidu and Pramod Mahajan, the sources said Advani had “little choice” but to accept the Sangh’s counsel.
That a mutually acceptable arrangement had been worked out was apparent from a statement Bharati issued yesterday in which she described Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee as “living symbols of political asceticism and development” and herself as a “jal tarang (water wave)” in the BJP’s ideology.
