The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (Soren) and the Jharkhand People's Party today castigated the BJP Parliamentarians from this region for apologising over the Vananchal issue to Vajpayee, saying it had exposed the BJP's `flippant' attitude to the Statehood cause.

The JMM-S spokesman Rajendra Mehta said that apart from exposing the BJP's non-serious attitude to the Vananchal Jharkhand issue, the BJP MPs' apology came just a day after their threat to resign en-bloc from the Lok Sabha if the introduction of the Vananchal Bill was deferred, speaks volumes about their `meek' stand over the issue. ``This gesture by the BJP MPs proves their ineffectuality at a time whenmost pro-Jharkhand parties of the region are adopting measures to mount pressure at the Centre, for introducing the Vananchal Bill during the winter session of Parliament,'' he said. The JPP President Vinod Bhagat described the apology move by the BJP MPs as `impotent', adding that it will cost them dearly in the next elections.

Commenting on the dilly-dallying attitude of the BJP towards the Vananchal Bill, Bhagat said that a party which promised to initiate concrete legislative steps to speed up the creation of a separate Jharkhand/Vananchal State if elected to power, should not have backtracked over the issue in this manner. Mehta also criticised the BJP MPs for keeping mum when the Samata Party MP Prabhnath Singh opposed the Vananchal Bill in the Lok Sabha recently.

He called upon the people of Jharkhand in the name of Vananchal to see through the gameplan of the BJP and get ready for a long-drawn agitation for the realisation of their long-cherished dream of Statehood.