BOMBAY, 1 January 2006 — L.K. Advani stepped down as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) yesterday, making way for the relatively lightweight Rajnath Singh.
Advani told a press conference here that he had sent his resignation to BJP Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu and this had been accepted.
Rajnath Singh, a Hindutva votary and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, will formally take charge Jan. 2 at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi.
“I am happy to announce that senior party leader Rajnath Singh is the new BJP president. I extend my best wishes to him and assure that the party will reach new heights under his leadership,” Advani told reporters while garlanding him.
“I had announced at the Madras meeting of the BJP National Executive that I will step down as president. I have done so,” Advani said.
Advani said there had been consultations within the party after his decision to step down and Rajnath Singh’s name was finalized as the new president.
Rajnath Singh, 54, caused a stir in Uttar Pradesh when he made copying in school examinations a cognizable offense, a move that earned him both brickbats and bouquets.
He is known more for his strong belief in Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology. He played a prominent role in the emotive drive to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya that led to the razing of the Babri Mosque in December 1992.
Advani said it was not BJP ideology but some of its members who were to blame for the party’s present troubles.
According to Advani, party leaders should rise above selfish interests and they should take care of their public conduct.
While the IQ of some leaders was very high, their EQ (Emotional Quotient) was very low and the difficulties arose because of them, he added. He said “equally important was moral quotient and spiritual quotient”.
Meanwhile, the police are probing a CD that was apparently secretly filmed in Bhopal allegedly showing now disgraced BJP leader Sanjay Joshi in bed with an unidentified woman.
The investigations got under way in real earnest after the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Madhya Pradesh police Friday night filed a complaint in the case.
“On the basis of a letter Joshi gave to the police chief (Dec. 25), a complaint has been lodged against an unidentified person,” a senior police official told IANS.
“In the complaint, the unidentified person has been charged with trying to blackmail Joshi, committing forgery, conspiring, making fake documents, CD and photographs and misusing electronic equipments,” the official added.
Joshi, considered the BJP’s most powerful general secretary, came to Bhopal Dec. 25 and gave a letter to state police chief Swaraj Puri, saying some unidentified person was trying to blackmail him on the basis of a CD.
Puri reported the matter to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. He asked Puri to investigate the matter secretly.
But on Dec. 27 several BJP leaders attending the national meet in Bombay got copies of the sleazy CD and Joshi had to resign from the party post.
— With input from IANS
