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Not all seems well at the top in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday said he would quit politics if there was any truth in rumours that his son, Pankaj, indulged in “misconduct”. He denied reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had rebuked his son for his purported misdemeanour.
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and later BJP president Amit Shah issued statements to term rumours and media reports about the alleged transgression of the home minister’s son as motivated and baseless. However, Singh, Shah or the PMO did not specify what the rumours were and who they thought was behind the rumours.
The PM’s statement, as well as Shah’s, hinted at not only rumours about Singh and his son but other ministers as well. To a direct question by reporters whether a party rival was behind spreading rumours about his son, Singh said he had no comments to make and trusted investigative journalists to get to the bottom of the truth.
The trust deficit among the BJP brass has its origins in persistent rumours, now denied by the home minister, that sometime ago Modi called Pankaj and asked him, in the presence of his father, to stop dealing with transfers and postings of Indian Police Service (IPS) officers. The home ministry is the cadre controlling authority of IPS officers.
Rumours about the home minister and his son, as also about how some other ministers have been ticked off by the PM for their acts of
omissions and commissions, have persisted for nearly a month. These received further grist when the PM said at his public rally in Kargil on August 12 “na khaunga, na khane doonga (will not accept bribe, will not let others accept bribe)”.
A media report on Wednesday claimed Singh had complained to the PM, party president Shah and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leadership about the persistent rumours and that “a ministerial colleague” could be behind these.
The report suggested the episode had something to do with the internal power struggle within the government.
This morning, as he came to attend office at North Block, Singh told the media: “In the past 15-20 days, there have been continuous rumours about me and my family. I thought the rumours had no basis and these would end in some days. But I see these rumours are gaining momentum day by day. I want to assure the nation that the day allegations, even prima facie or small, are proven against me or my family, I will quit politics and public life and sit at home.” The minister confirmed he had spoken to the PM and Shah about the rumours, and both expressed surprise and termed those baseless. Singh denied he went to RSS to complain.
A little later, in a statement, the PMO said: “This has reference to reports appearing in a section of the media over the past several weeks, mentioning the prime minister, and referring to the conduct of some Union ministers, and alleged misconduct of the home minister’s son.”
It said the reports were “plain lies, motivated and constitute a malicious attempt at character assassination and tarnishing the image of the government.” The PMO said “those indulging in such rumour-mongering are damaging the interest of the nation. These reports are strongly denied”.
Singh hasn’t had the best of times in the new government, despite being the second in its hierarchy. The latest development comes after Pankaj was denied a party ticket to the Noida Assembly seat in the by-polls to 10 seats of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly on September 13. Senior leader Lalji Tandon’s son Gopal was given a ticket for the Lucknow (East) Assembly constituency. Earlier in the tenure of this government, Singh was kept out of the reconstituted Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. The PMO had also asked Singh to drop his first choice of private secretary. A private secretary was appointed only after the PMO vetted it.
Pankaj is a general secretary of BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit, and is being seen as a possible contender to the post of UP chief minister if the party does well in the Assembly elections scheduled for 2017. On Tuesday, Singh was one of the five BJP leaders included in the newly created advisory group, or Margdarshak Mandal. Others, apart from Modi, were senior party leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
BJP president Shah also issued a statement. He termed the rumours about “activities of ministers”, including Singh and his son, as “baseless”. “It is my opinion as the president of the party that the conduct of all our ministers is of the highest standards and their integrity is beyond doubt,” Shah said.
Shah described Singh as one of the senior-most leaders of the party, who, along with Modi, played a key role in the historic Lok Sabha victory. He said Singh’s son Pankaj was a committed worker of the party for the past 10 years and handled varied responsibilities. Shah said the reports were motivated by ill-will and was an attempt to hurt the party’s image and to divert the people’s attention from the Modi-led government’s development agenda. He advised the media not be affected by misleading information and to base their reports on facts.
The Congress said it had not levelled any allegations against either Singh or his son. “So the country and the Congress party want to know what are these allegations that are being denied,” Congress spokesman Ajay Maken said.
“With a lot of humility, the Congress party also wants to know from Rajnath Singh, that when it, the principal Opposition party, had not levelled any such allegations, who made these allegations against you,” he asked.
Communist Party of India leader D Raja said: “Without any fire, there cannot be any smoke. It shows there are a lot of things... there is internal strife... the politics is changing.” He said the denials by the PMO and the home minister were “too late and too little” as reports had been appearing in national dailies for days together. Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit attributed the source of the rumours to someone inside BJP.
Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav came in Rajnath Singh’s support, saying the allegations were “baseless” as he (Rajnath) was a “spotless” person.
