JAIPUR: A day after Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot put the spotlight on fissures within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Rajasthan, BJP leaders in state capital Jaipur on Tuesday trooped down to assembly speaker CP Joshi to ask why he hadn’t accepted the resignation letters of the 91 Congress legislators handed over to him last month.
“There is uncertainty in Rajasthan regarding the status of those who had resigned (Congress MLAs). Are they still ministers? As a decision has not been made, BJP told the speaker to not stall it and make a decision so that people know the status,” leader of opposition in the assembly Gulab Chand Kataria told reporters after meeting CP Joshi at his residence in Jaipur.
The BJP’s effort to underline the power struggle within the Congress comes a day after Ashok Gehlot took a swipe at the BJP leadership over former chief minister Vasundhara Raje, saying the BJP had been unjust to the two-time chief minister. “The injustice that the BJP is doing with her is in front of everyone. You do not behave well with a former chief minister, do not even talk, do not give appointment … this has never happened in our party,” Gehlot told reporters on Monday.
The BJP’s state leadership did not directly respond to Gehlot’s barb over Vasundhara Raje, the BJP’s national vice president.
Instead, the BJP focused on the resignation letters given by Congress MLAs loyal to Gehlot in September when they skipped a party meeting that was to formalise the transfer of power from Gehlot to Sachin Pilot. Gehlot, considered the first choice of the high command for the next party president’s post, was widely seen to be reluctant to hand over Rajasthan to Pilot.
His loyalists scuttled the move and Gehlot later sought to put the entire episode behind him with an apology to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
There has, however, been no formal word from the assembly secretariat about the resignations.
In its representation handed over to CP Joshi, Kataria said: “The BJP Legislature Party requests you to accept the resignation letters of the MLAs given voluntarily or the MLA should appear in front of you and withdraw resignations, and apologize publicly to the people of the state”.
Kataria stressed that none of the 91 MLAs has withdrawn the resignation letters that they have on September 25. He was accompanied by deputy leader of opposition Rajendra Rathore, BJP state president Satish Poonia, BJP whip Jogeshwar Garg and other MLAs.
Congress chief whip in the assembly Mahesh Joshi brushed aside the BJP demand, saying it was an internal matter of the Congress.
