Shourie calls Rajnath ‘Alice in Blunderland’

The simmering crisis in BJP deepened today with senior leader Arun Shourie attacking the party leadership, saying that even raising questions within the party forum was being dubbed as "indiscipline" and that some leaders at the top were behaving as 'Humpty Dumpty'.

Rajya Sabha MP and former minister Arun Shourie took on his own party on Monday, finding fault with numerous aspects of its functioning, and lambasting its president, Rajnath Singh.

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“Rajnath Singh is like Alice in Blunderland. And the BJP is like a kati patang (has lost all direction),” said Shourie in an interview to NDTV 24/7.

Shourie’s outburst has compounded the BJP’s problems. The party is already reeling under criticism for having expelled its senior leader Jaswant Singh — for writing an adulatory book on Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah — last Wednesday.

Shourie was known to be unhappy with his party ever since parliamentary party leader Lal Krishna Advani appointed Arun Jaitley the BJP’s leader in the Rajya Sabha.

Shourie did not personally attack any leader other than Rajnath Singh. But he said there were “people in the party who have brought it to this pass. They are the ones who are hurting the party.”

He wanted the RSS to take over the BJP and change the top leadership.

Shourie said he was ready to face expulsion from the BJP. BJP sources in turn indicated that after his outburst, the party would not hesitate to oblige him.