BOMBAY/BHOPAL, 29 December 2005 — India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is passing through difficult times has been dealt another blow, this time a scandal involving the alleged sexual high-jinks of an avowedly celibate official.
The BJP is holding a five-day meeting to celebrate its 25th anniversary, but the media has instead trumpeted the resignation of a party secretary Sanjay Joshi.
Joshi stepped down Tuesday after a sexually explicit CD allegedly showing him romping with an unidentified woman made the rounds among BJP members and the media.
“Keeping in view Joshi’s request, he was being relieved of his responsibility till the completion of (a) probe,” party President L.K. Advani told party leaders at their meeting in Bombay, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
Joshi, who is also a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s hard-line Hindu backers, had apparently taken a voluntary vow of celibacy as some full-time RSS workers do.
Joshi, however, complained to Madhya Pradesh police that attempts were being made to blackmail him. He has requested the police to probe the matter.
According to Madhya Pradesh Director General of Police Swaraj Puri he has received a letter from Joshi that someone was trying to blackmail him in the name of a CD. The matter is being inquired into, he added.
“At present I am coordinating it myself. No formal investigation has been launched and the future course of action will be decided shortly,” Puri said.
In his complaint, Joshi alleged that he was getting calls from landline as well as cell phones in Madhya Pradesh, adding that objectionable references about him were made by the alleged blackmailer.
The sex scandal may also overshadow the official announcement of a new party president to replace Advani, expected to take place after the close of the party meeting tomorrow.
A low-key party member, Rajnath Singh, has reportedly been chosen to succeed the hawkish Advani. But it is not clear whether he will able to end the turmoil which has hit the BJP since its shock election defeat by the Congress party in May last year.
Since then the party has become polarized between moderates wanting the party to move to the center, and hardliners who feel a return to the core values of hard-line Hindutva will win more votes.
The divisions came to the fore in June, in the firestorm that surrounded Advani after he praised archrival Pakistan’s founder as a “great man” during a trip there.
Advani yesterday launched a strong attack on the Congress party, accusing it of failing the “minimal test of political morality.”
Pointing out that the United Progressive Alliance government had four tainted ministers and two of them had to resign, Advani urged the party workers to oust the Congress-led government.
“If the scourge of corruption is to be removed from our society, the Congress will have to be ousted from every lever of power. Power corrupts; Congress in power corrupts absolutely,” Advani said.
