The Bharatiya Janata Party's top decision-making body, its Parliamentary Board, on Wednesday decided to suspend its Legislature Party leader in Jammu and Kashmir, Chamanlal Gupta, and six other MLAs for cross-voting in the recent Legislative Council election.
They will be issued notice asking why they should not be expelled from the party for six years for having defied a whip asking them to vote for the party candidate Thakur Ranjit Singh, who polled only four votes though the party strength in the Legislature is 11. They have been asked to respond to the show-cause within a week, general secretary Ananth Kumar told journalists after a heated discussion at the Board meeting that lasted over two hours.
Leader of the revolt
It was clear from the party action that Mr. Gupta, who has now been replaced by Jugal Kishore Sharma as the Legislature Party leader, was the leader of the revolt. Party leaders pointed out that Mr. Gupta is an old Jan Sangh hand who has been with the party since the earliest times and was also an RSS man.
The others against whom the party cracked the whip are Jagdish Sapolia, Master Lal Chand, Garu Ram, Baldevraj Sharma, Durga Das and Bharat Bhushan.
Inquiry by team
After the display of open rebellion, BJP president Nitin Gadkari asked a team of leaders headed by Jammu and Kashmir in-charge O.P. Kohli to inquire into the sordid affair in which, many party leaders believe, the BJP legislators sold their votes to the Congress and/or National Conference candidates.
The team report was submitted to Mr. Gadkari, who held a meeting on Tuesday where each MLA was asked to appear before the party leaders and explain how this had happened. The report was placed before the Parliamentary Board on Wednesday.
When Mr. Kumar was asked how the party established the guilt of the MLAs as the voting for the Council was through secret ballot, he indicated that the Kohli report had concluded that these MLAs were guilty of gross breach of party discipline. “There was only one point of discussion at the Board meeting,” Mr. Kumar said, “and that was: there was a party candidate in whose favour a whip was issued, which was violated by these MLAs.”
It seems the party took the step of disciplining the MLAs at the expense of almost wiping out the electoral gains made during the last Assembly elections.
Party insiders say the entire Jammu and Kashmir unit is in disarray and there is a lot of resentment against State unit president Shamsher Singh Manhas. And clearly, the MLAs were unhappy with Mr. Ranjit Singh's candidature as the same MLAs did vote for two other party candidates — M.M. War and Satish Sharma. What is also clear is that with 30 votes needed to win a seat on the Council, the BJP was in no position to win a single seat. Some insiders are of the view that sooner rather than later Mr. Gadkari will also have to replace the State unit chief.
