Union minister Nitin Gadkari said on Friday that the Bharatiya Janata Party's central leadership is in talks with its veteran leaders regarding the concerns raised by them about the Bihar polls defeat. Gadkari said that party veterans including LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were “highly respected leaders” and rubbished media reports which said he had demanded taking disciplinary action against them.
Home minister Rajnath Singh also did not support taking any action against party dissenters. Singh said he is in favour of analysing what Advani and Joshi had said with regard to the party’s dismal show in the Bihar elections.
Union minister Venkaiah Naidu also commented on the matter on Friday and said that though the party would analyse the veterans’ remarks, it would have been better if they had made the comments in a private forum. Naidu defended Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, saying that the country was moving forward because of Modi, and that the party had made inroads into several states under Shah’s leadership.
On Tuesday, Advani, Joshi, and senior BJP leaders Shanta Kumar and Yashwant Sinha hit out at the party's leadership in the wake of the Bihar results. They said that the party had been emasculated in the last one year and was being “forced to kowtow to a handful”. They also demanded a thorough review of the poll debacle.
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