BJP axes Yadav; inducts Arif, Lakshman

I have joined the BJP to remove the minority's mistrust towards the Sangh: Arif

In a day of political flip-flops, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief M Venkaiah Naidu finally expelled DP Yadav, a history-sheeter in Uttar Pradesh, from the party without assigning any reason but inducted into the party one-time critic of the Sangh Parivar Arif Mohammad Khan and controversial Congress leader Lakshman Singh.

Even as BJP stalwarts and sympathisers gathered at Naidu's residence to draw a blue-print of the vision document this morning, there was a palpable unease over the bad publicity the party got on account of induction of DP Yadav into the BJP.

The finalisation of the vision document was a mere formality as the BJP spin doctors had already prepared a draft. Obviously, the pressing need was to wriggle out of the situation the party had been caught because of Yadav.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani were clear that Yadav was a political liability and had to be jettisoned immediately.

It was an apparent loss of face for the BJP leadership when Naidu had to eat his words and declare that he had withdrawn the membership, bestowed on Yadav with much fanfare inducted into the party only four days ago despite a series of criminal cases against him and his son, a prime accused in a murder case.

Rattled by a barrage of attack from opposition parties pricking its oft-repeated claim of a party with a difference, Naidu said, "I have decided to withdraw the membership to Yadav in view of the raging controversy on the issue."

The BJP chief said he had already spoken to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister on the issue.

"I have also spoken to Yadav who wanted to leave the party," Naidu said, indicating a softened approach towards Yadav who was tipped to contest the elections as the party candidate.

However, BJP sources said a section of BJP leaders had assured Yadav that he would be given indirect backing if he independently contested against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.

"The party has been trying to give an honourable way out to Yadav whose induction and subsequent expulsion into the BJP has already made him politically relevant in his constituency," said BJP sources.

On the other hand, Yadav claimed at a press conference that he had left the BJP in view of the controversy and the inability of the party to defend him.

But the BJP's zeal to induct Arif Mohammad Khan and Lakshman Singh provoked a different kind of controversy.

While in Khan's case there may be a unique convergence of the views of the Sangh Parivar and Khan over secularism and the Shah Bano case, Khan was certainly hard put to explain his shift of stance on the BJP.

"I have joined the BJP to develop a proximity with the Sangh Parivar in order to remove the minority's mistrust," he said.

After a decade of fight with the BJP and communal forces, he gained nothing and chose to join the BJP, the former Union minister said.

Khan's explanations for his action did cause some embarrassing moments for Naidu and his colleagues like Pramod Mahajan and Sushma Swaraj, who shared the dais.

Similarly, Lakshman Singh, the maverick brother of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh, joined the saffron camp as he felt "quite frustrated" after the Congress decided to forge an alliance with the DMK"" a party accused of having sympathy with Rajiv Gandhi's assassins.

Singh's induction has evoked a strong reaction from the BJP Madhya Pradesh unit as Singh has been accused of bullying the BJP workers in the one decade of his brother's regime.