Senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha,whose letter to party president Rajnath Singh demanding accountability raised a furore,has said that the party wasnt serious about finding out why it lost the election. Instead,he indicated,it was sidelining those who raised questions. Speaking to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTVs Walk the Talk broadcast tonight,the former BJP vice president said: When I returned to Delhi (from Hazaribagh after the election),I thought there would be a lot of activity and introspection.Somebody would ask me why I won. Somebody would ask me why we lost,where we lost. I found that there was nothing of that kind happening and that kind of disappointed me. I waited until we were called to a meeting of the newly elected parliamentarians on May 31,and that meeting again,was somewhat casual,in a light-hearted manner and we tried to explain away our defeat.It was not serious. He said the party could do with some fairness in its running. He expressed regret that although as Union Finance Minister he presented five Budgets and was called upon by the party to discuss the fallout of the global meltdown in India this time,he wasnt asked to speak on the Budget. A little more fairness in the party,in terms of responsibilities,in terms of opportunities that you give to the members in Lok Sabha,would go a long way in keeping everybody satisfied.I expected the party to ask me to speak on the Budget.I was informed that somebody else was going to speak on this.and that clearly disappointed me, Sinha said,adding that he was waiting for this session to be over,after which he would bring it to the notice of the leadership. We were the three people in the BJP (Jaswant Singh,Arun Shourie and myself) who were entrusted with this responsibility (on the economic slowdown) and then suddenly I find that Jaswant Singh was not here on the day of the Budget but I certainly was here.If you look at the people who participated in this session from the BJPs side on important debates,you will come to your own conclusions, Sinha said. Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi were among the leaders to have led the BJP side during various debates in Lok Sabha. While the party and leaders like L K Advani and Arun Jaitley have explained the defeat in terms of emergence of a bipolar polity in the country, Sinha doesnt agree with the view. We can say that a bipolar polity has emerged in India finally and that we have lost only 22 seats (compared to our 2004 tally). But those are consolations that we can give to ourselves. Unlike in 2004,the difference between the number of seats that we have and the number of seats that the Congress party has is 90. More distressing is the fact that some or a part of our constituency,seems to have deserted us, Sinha said.
