Partymen turn against Jaswant, Sushma in RS

NEW DELHI: The BJP seems to be gripped by a lemming syndrome. While the party is proving unable to corner the beleaguered Manmohan Singh government, its senior leaders in the Rajya Sabha, Jaswant Singh and Sushma Swaraj, have been charged by their own party MPs to be aiding the Congress’ efforts to shift the focus away from the Mumbai blasts and concentrate on the Bill aimed at protecting the offices of profit of 46 ruling party leaders.

Mr Singh—who dented the ‘national security’ attack of the BJP by revisiting the Kandahar episode—and Sushma Swaraj were at the receiving end of a bitter attack from party MPs for cutting ‘private deals with the Communists and government leadership’.

BJP MPs in the upper house said the two leaders had helped the government take up the office of profit bill, which tops the priority chart of the Congress and communists.

The meeting of the Business Advisory Committee of the Rajya Sabha had, on Wednesday, agreed to continue discussion on the Mumbai blasts. The discussion on the issue had remained inconclusive on Wednesday, and was scheduled on the agenda on Thursday.

But when the House met after adjournments over the nuclear deal, the chairman announced that the office of profit bill would get precedence over the blasts debate. When the opposition members protested, the chairman said that he’d changed the schedule after Singh and Swaraj gave their consent. The ruckus that followed saw yet another adjournment of the House.

After the adjournment, the chairman invited Mr Singh and Ms Swaraj to his chamber to talk out the matter. BJP MPs went to extent of protesting against their participation in the meeting. They said the party should be represented by those who want the continuation of the debate on the Mumbai blasts.

At the meeting, the chairman repeated his stand that the schedule was revised following approval from Jaswant Singh. The opposition leader, at this point, offered to quit for ‘putting the chairman in an embarrassing position’. Soon, there was a spate of the by-now-familiar resignation offers. And it all ended swiftly with each one consoling the other.

But the government and the communists, who had seemed to be cornered this morning, had their way when BJP members were forced to agree to a debate on the office of profit bill. BJP members were heard complaining that the party’s own leaders seemed to concur with the government-Left’s ‘stand that the profit of private members is more important than the killing of 200 people in Mumbai’.