Uma challenges BJP leaders

THE PRESIDENT of the newly-formed Bharatiya Janshakti Party Uma Bharti on Thursday challenged BJP leadership on many vital issues which contributed to the party's rise saying these leaders forgot them and enjoyed power for six years.

THE PRESIDENT of the newly-formed Bharatiya Janshakti Party Uma Bharti on Thursday challenged BJP leadership on many vital issues which contributed to the party's rise saying these leaders forgot them and enjoyed power for six years.

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Talking to mediapersons here this afternoon, Bharati said, “There has been an ideological crisis in the Bharatiya Janta Party for the last a couple of years and her new party would carry forward the ideology of her parent party.

She alleged that top leaders of BJP had shifted their attention from its main issues after getting power. She invited leader of Opposition L K Advani and BJP national president Rajnath Singh for an open debate as to how BJP leaders used to crack jokes on its major issues while enjoying fruits of power. She said the BJP emerged from the Jan Sangh and now Bhartiya Janshakti Party has emerged from BJP which will carry forward the ideology of the party (BJP).

“There was no space for communalism and secularism in politics and these issues should be left on religious leaders of the concerned religions,” she said. A grand temple of Lord Ram should be constructed in Ayodhya. Bharti strongly supported the reservation on caste lines and said that SC/ST and OBCs should be given due reservation in higher and technical institutions of the country. She stressed the need of a final debate of all the political parties on reservation policy.

She said her party did not subscribe to the Left ideology and would have ideological fight with it and political fight with the Congress. On the question whether she wanted to comment on Pramod Mahajan's demise whom she identified as ‘political manager’ after her expulsion from BJP, Bharati did not to give satisfactory reply.