No next term for me,says BJP chief Rajnath Singh

In his first comments after his partys rout in 2009 elections,party president Rajnath Singh has ruled out another term for himself as party chief.

In his first comments after his partys rout in 2009 elections that has shifted the focus in the BJP to organisational matters,party president Rajnath Singh has ruled out another term for himself as party chief.

For the next year or two (after the completion of my term),I would like to be left out of all this, he told The Indian Express today. Singh took over as party chief in January 2006 in the wake of the Jinnah row that forced L K Advani to step down. Singh was later given a full three-year term in December 2006. A section of the party,sympathetic to him,was toying with the idea of getting the party constitution amended to enable him another term (the party constitution,amended in December 1999,limits the presidents stint to one term of three years).

Asked on who among second-rung leaders would he like to see as his successor,the 58-year-old leader said: Such decisions are taken collectively by the party,and they will accordingly be discussed at an appropriate time.

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Asked about partys chief election strategist and BJP general secretary Arun Jaitleys role in the recent election,Singh said: Arun Jaitley is our best strategist and,as party president,I alone should shoulder the blame for the defeat.

On the complaint by several defeated candidates that Narendra Modis name as the next Prime Minister damaged the partys prospects,the BJP president said: Advanis candidature had been endorsed by the BJP Parliamentary Board (the apex decision making body in the party).

Singh,who won from Ghaziabad,claimed there was no overarching theme in the elections. The results varied form state to state and probably even from constituency to constituency, he said,echoing what Advani had said about the 2004 elections that general elections are an aggregate of various local elections. In its recent issue,RSS journal Organiser has,however,rubbished this theory.

While a cross-section of party leaders,including Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan,called for an exclusive development agenda for the party,the BJP president said the party cannot ever dissociate itself from the core ideology of nationalism.

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