Kalyan terms his return to BJP the biggest blunder

LUCKNOW: Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, who quit the BJP for the second time on Tuesday, alleging humiliation and neglect in the organisation, termed his return to the party in 2004 as his biggest political blunder.

Addressing a press conference held here on Tuesday to announce his resignation Singh dubbed his return to the saffron party in 2004 after quitting it in 1999 as the "biggest political blunder" and said he had come back at the insistence of leaders like Pramod Mahajan, Balbir Punj and Dinanath Misra who approached him thrice to return to the "family".

"They came thrice to me with the invitation of Atalji and Advaniji to return to the family," he said.

Singh, who is said to have enjoyed not the best of relations with its President Rajnath Singh, described him as a very wise person after quitting the party.

Taking a long pause at the press conference to find the right word to describe the BJP President, Singh finally called him "bahut hoshiyar admi" (a very wise man).

However, the former BJP leader, who had last resigned from the party in 1999, bitterly criticising party patriarch Atal Bihari Vajpayee, said he had immense respect for the former prime minister and announced that he would campaign for him in case he contested from Lucknow in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

However, expressing unhappiness with L K Advani, Singh said he had voiced his reservations to the party's prime
ministerial candidate about fielding Ashok Pradhan from Bulandshahr but still he was allowed to contest from the seat.