RSS move to bring back Uma to BJP runs into rough weather

New Delhi, Nov 13 (UNI) The RSS suggestion to bring back former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti into the BJP fold to check the fall in the saffron votes seems to have run into rough weather with both BJP and Ms Bharti's party not welcoming the view.

Reacting to the views expressed by senior RSS leader M G Vaidya in his regular column in Tarun Bharat, the RSS mouthpiece in Marathi, BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said the Uma Bharti issue is a 'closed chapter.' Bharatiya Janashakti Party General Secretary Chandra Raj Singhvi said there was no question of his party leader going back to the BJP.

Mr Javadekar said the BJP respected Mr Vaidya's views as a senior leader but that did not mean the party concurred. Mr Singhvi regretted the RSS wanted Ms Bharti's recall to stem the slide in vote share. She had left the party not for the sake of power but because the party was bereft of any of the professed ideologies -- Hindutva, Sadachar, nationalism of the RSS.

''We would have been happy if they had distanced themselves from the BJP for disregarding the principles, ideology,'' he remarked.

Analysts behind the scene estimate the BJP had lost over six lakh votes in the recently concluded byelections in Vidisha, Bhagalpur and Koderma Lok Sabha seats and the Bada Malhera Assembly constituency vacated by Ms Bharti, after her expulsion from the party.

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