BJP red in face over Natwar episode

NEW DELHI: The BJP’s busybodies have pushed the party into an embarrassing corner with the oil scam-tainted Natwar Singh desperately attempting to end his estrangement with the Congress.

A section led by former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, which had taken upon itself the task of providing the party with saleable themes, has for the past three days been breaking political bread with Mr Singh.

This section got an opening when the leader of the opposition LK Advani, in his anxiety to put the Congress in the dock, came close to giving Mr Singh a clean chit. At a press conference held a day after the contents of the report became public, Mr Advani said that Mr Singh was being made a scape-goat by the Congress. This virtually kicked the bottom off the Opposition’s campaign that Mr Singh and Congress made a killing out of their commitment for anti-imperialism.

Mr Sinha and his friends, who got into action after the Advani assertions, took charge of Mr Singh’s ‘crusade’ along with known busybodies like Amar Singh and JD(U)’s Digvijay Singh. They also provided the backdrop when Mr Natwar Singh made vitriolic attacks against the ‘weak’ prime minister and his senior colleagues such as Pranab Mukherjee. And they genuinely believed that Mr Singh would take the fight against the Prime Minister and other Congress leaders to its logical end.

But the former Union minister on Thursday appeared to be redefining this ‘logical end’ by seeking an appointment with the prime minister and moving closer to a few Congress leaders.

The BJP has only itself to blame as its leaders have lost the habit of leading from the front and prioritising issues. When the Mr Singh issue hit the public domain, the party never though it necessary to fashion a strategy to corner the government. As a matter of fact, the report provided enough ammunition, but was somehow left unnoticed by the Opposition for almost 48 hours.

While the party rushed to provide a soothing balm to the former union minister, issues such as the manner in which the Congress, which too had been named as a beneficiary of the Iraqi oil-for-food programme, was allowed to go scot free, were left untouched, with the Pathak panel making virtually no attempt to zero down on the people who accepted the coupons on behalf of the party.

The party had a tough time defending Mr Sinha’s actions. Asked whether had the party’s approval in backing the tainted Congress leader, Mr V K Malhotra was evasive. ``Our only charge is that the Pathak authority panel has targeted the small fishes, but let off the big ones,’’ the BJP spokesman said.

With Mr Natwar Singh effecting a volte-face, the BJP has now set its sights on training its guns on the Congress. Precious time, however, may have been lost through all this.