BJP in fix over web site
R R Nair in New Delhi
The Bharatiya Janata Party is in a fix trying to explain the goof
up on its web site www.bjp.org
The only Indian political party present on the
Internet, the BJP site
has got publicity for all the wrong reasons. And its prime ministerial candidate Atal Bihari Vajpayee is hard put issuing statements to get out of the mess.
What has come as a big embarrassment for the party is an article supposedly written by Vajpayee titled Sangh is my soul. It is a tirade against the minorities which are very much in the Sangh Parivar's vein. It was first published in 1995 in the weekly Organiser, and had then raked up a controversy. Vajpayee had disowned it and the Organiser subsequently published an apology.
Now, the article has made a reappearance on the Internet causing the BJP much embarrassment.
On Wednesday, Vajpayee issued a statement saying, ''It was written as an article based on an interview and the interviewer had twisted my views on a number of points."
The article goes against the BJP's newfound secularism and Vajpayee's image as the soft face of Hindutva.
'We did pull down the structure at Ayodhya. In fact, it was a reaction to the Muslim vote bank,' is one of the observations in the article.
When it was first published, BJP sources reveal, the article had landed Organiser editor Sheshadri Chari in trouble, and Vajpayee had asked for an explanation.
Chari, it is learnt, wrote the piece after an informal chat with Vajpayee.
Speculation is now rife in some quarters that the goof-up is an attempt by party president Lal Kishinchand Advani's supporters to tarnish Vajpayee's image.
"The digging up of the article and putting it up on the Internet is seen as a mischievous attempt to denigrate Vajpayee from within the party,'' a top party official told Rediff On The NeT.
Sudheendra Kulkarni, who manages the BJP site on the Internet, was handpicked by Advani a couple years ago. A senior journalist with The Sunday Observer and Blitz, he worked with the Hindujas before he joined the BJP. Kulkarni accompanied Advani throughout last year's Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra.
"The whole media cell has to be overhauled. These people who have joined recently lack continuity in our party's ideology. You cannot expect them to have the same sort of commitment a hard core RSS worker would have," says a national executive member.
Vajpayee has also issued another clarification on his deeds during the Quit India Movement. Word had spread in media circles that Vajpayee had turned approver in 1942 to save his skin, and that his statement in court caused the conviction of a few others. Congress spokesman V N Gadgil had also referred to it.
Issuing a copy of the judgment vindicating his involvement in the episode Vajpayee said, "This is not the first time that such libelous allegations have been made against me. Since 1971, on the eve of every election this canard is spread to tarnish my image."
The goof-up is seen as a major setback for the party that has been riding the crest of opinion polls. Now with the party itself bungling its chances with the minorities, the BJP leaders fear a backlash in the media
about inner party power struggles.
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