Senior leaders should have discussed matter internally, says Govindacharya

Former RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya dissociated himself with the attack by party veterans on the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) top brass for the Bihar debacle and said the senior leaders should have discussed the matter internally.

"I am amazed to see my name involved in drafting statement of BJP veterans, I condemn my name being dragged in this controversy," he said.

"Just for Deepawali greetings I had gone to Murli Manohar Joshi's residence. I didn't know that any statement was getting prepared or anybody was drafting it. I wasn't part of the drafting process at all," he added.

Govindacharya also stressed that communication and trust within the party needs to be improved.

In a scathing attack BJP veterans L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Shanta Kumar and Yashwant Sinha said that the party leadership had clearly leant nothing from their loss in the Delhi Assembly elections.

"The results of the Bihar elections show that no lesson has been learnt, from the fiasco in Delhi. To say that everyone is responsible for the defeat in Bihar is to ensure that no one is held responsible," the veterans said in statement.

"It shows that those who would have appropriated credit if the Party had won are bent on shrugging off responsibility for the disastrous showing in Bihar," it added.

A counter statement was later issued by Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Venkaiah Naidu and Nitin Gadkari saying they have been 'fortunate' to be led by L.K. Advani for decades and 'welcome' any guidance and suggestion by the senior leaders.

The counter statement also reminded the veterans that the BJP won the Lok Sabha elections last year under the leadership Prime Minister Narendra Modi and thereafter, the party had success in the Assembly Elections of Jharkhand, Haryana, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andamans, Kerala and Assam.