Jaswant back in BJP

Having decided to bury the hatchet and forget about Jinnah and Kandahar episodes altogether, expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh was readmitted into the party after a gap of 10 months. It was in August 2009 at the ‘chintan baithak’ of the party in Shimla that Jaswant Singh, who had served the party for 44 years, was ousted unceremoniously for having authored the book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence.The BJP parliamentary board meeting chaired by the then BJP president Rajnath Singh took the sudden decision, ahead of the chintan baithak and conveyed the same to Jaswant Singh. After his expulsion, Jaswant Singh was prompted to say that ‘from Hanuman he has been turned into Ravan’.Flanked by newly-elected BJP president Nitin Gadkari and BJP NDA working chairman L K Advani, Jaswant Singh, in the presence of Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha S S Ahluwalia, profusely thanked the leaders for having brought in ‘paapi purush’ (sinful person) back into the party. At that time, Jaswant Singh was considered to have committed a sin for praising Jinnah. He had termed him as a ‘secular’ person in his book, which had for obvious reasons infuriated the RSS leadership.Later, when he had fallen apart, Jaswant Singh had also put L K Advani in the dock, revealing that he was indeed kept in the dark about the terrorists, who accompanied him in the same aircraft to Kandhar. The terrorists were swapped for the hijacked passengers in Kandahar. With the assurance from the BJP president Nitin Gadkari that ‘past is past,’ Jaswant Singh has decided to swallow his earlier humiliation, terming it as a ‘closed chapter.’ Conspicuous by their absence on Thursday were former BJP president Rajnath Singh and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley. Jaswant Singh had also taken potshots at Jaitley earlier, saying that the people, who were responsible for the party’s defeat at the hustings, were elevated to high posts. He had bitterly criticized the functioning and the absence of internal democracy in the party.

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