Vasundhara Raje asked to step down as Leader of Opposition: Rajnath Singh

     New Delhi: Following days of speculations over the issue of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vasundhara Raje’s continuance as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajasthan State Assembly, the BJP on Sunday decided that she should step down from the post in due time. Addressing a news conference in the national capital, Rajnath Singh said that Vasundhara Raje had been asked to submit her resignation, however, no time frame had been fixed for her to submit her papers. “The parliamentary board has not fixed any time frame for her to resign, and I am confident that she will follow the orders of the party. There is no need to suspect in that issue,” Singh said The decision about Vaundhara’s resignation was taken at the BJP’s Parliamentary Board meeting on Sunday. However, it was decided not to take any disciplinary action against Raje, who enjoys support of about 62 MLAs of the total 78 BJP MLAs in the State Assembly. Rajnath admitted before media persons that he had asked Vasundhara to resign previously. “Earlier I only asked Raje to step down from the Leader of Opposition,” Singh said. “The parliamentary board considered the statement given by Raje this morning as a positive step,” Singh said. On Sunday morning in Jaipur, Raje said: “I've never thought of leaving the BJP. My mother spent her life looking after the party's interests. I've never said anything against the BJP or the party's leaders. I will not float a new party. BJP is like a mother to me. There is no question of leaving the party.” August 16, 2009

Jinnah was a great Indian, says Jaswant Singh Top

     New Delhi: Following in the footsteps of party senior L.K. Advani, former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has called Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a great Indian, and admitted that he has been attracted by Jinnah's personality. In an interview to a private news channel, Singh blamed India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition. "Jinnah was a great Indian because he created something out of nothing and single handedly stood against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn't really like him and added that Mahatma Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian," Singh said. "I admire certain aspects of Jinnah's personality, his determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Gandhi was the son of a Diwan, Nehru and others - were born to wealth and position, but Jinnah created for himself a position," Singh said. Singh's statement comes just three days before the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Chintan Baithak at Shimla. "Nehru believed in a highly centralized polity. That's what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn't. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India," Singh said. Singh who has penned a Jinnah's biography titled, "Jinnah India Partition Independence" which is scheduled to be released on Monday Singh strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the man responsible for the country's partition, and said there was need to correct this distortion of history. "I think we have misunderstood Jinnah because we needed to create a demon. We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country," Singh added. Singh credited Jinnah with creating Pakistan and claimed that he was the only one who challenged the Congress party's monopoly during pre-independence days. He said Jinnah was a nationalist leader and fought the British for India's freedom but also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of Muslims of India, the acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity. Singh claimed that the view held by many in India that Jinnah hated Hindus was a mistake and said the demonisation of Jinnah was a direct result of the trauma of partition. August 16, 2009

RSS keeps out of a row over BJP leadership Top

     Chennai: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) kept off a controversy brewing in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Newspapers and television channels have been reporting that there was a tussle in the BJP as to who would succeed Advani when he steps down. "We (Bhagwat and Advani) discussed many things. He wanted to meet me. I didn't give him any directive in that meeting and only general affairs were discussed," said Mohan Bhagawat, chief of the RSS. Bhagwat said both the BJP and the RSS were separate entities. "The BJP is an independent autonomous body. We didn't direct or we don't think much about that. Our volunteers were there in BJP. Whenever they feel like coming and asking something or we feel like telling them something we do go and tell them. BJP leaders also come to us and ask us whenever they want to tell us something. But both organisations are separate. They are not at all inter-related," Bhagwat said. The RSS is considered as the ideological fountainhead of the BJP, which managed only 116 seats in the last April/May general elections.