BJP faces strong criticism from all quarters on multiple fronts and its road to 2019 is now turning out to be a very rocky one.
Voices from within the party have openly started raising their pitch given the recent anger against rape and murder of a minor in Jammu’s Kathua. Yashwant Sinha who had been one of the strongest critics of the Modi government eversince he rode home to power, has quit with a clear signal that he is on an exile from party politics. He will continue to rally against the dangers our democracy faces from the current regime.
Old warhorse of the BJP Yashwant Sinha over the recent years had repeatedly criticized the government for what he thought was against the mandate of the party.
A bureaucrat having turned politician, Yashwant Sinha became IAS in 1960 holding several important administrative posts in Bihar and the Centre during his 24-year tenure. He was Principal Secretary to former Bihar Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur in 1977.
After resigning from IAS in 1984, he joined active politics as member of the Janata Party. He was appointed as All-India General Secretary of the party in 1986 and was elected member of the Rajya Sabha in 1988. He became the General Secretary of the Janata Dal in 1989. He served as the Finance minister from November 1990 to June 1991 in Chandra Shekhar’s Cabinet.
Post a split in the JD, Sinha shifted to the BJP and became national spokesperson in June 1996. Served as Union Finance and External Affairs minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
By 2014 he was of the mind that he will no longer contest elections and he did not contest 2014 Parliamentary poll and his son Jayant Sinha won from the Hazaribagh seat in Jharkhand on a BJP ticket. Jayant Sinha is Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation in the Narendra Modi government at present.
Having quit electoral politics four years back, he finally gave up party politics on Saturday in presence of leaders from across the political spectrum.
Yashwant Sinha, who was Finance Minister and External Affairs Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, attended the meeting of the Rashtra Manch along with BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Congress leader Renuka Choudhary and AAP leaders Sanjay Singh and Ashutosh.
Former Bihar Assembly Speaker and senior JD(U) leader Uday Narayan Choudhary and Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, were also present at the function.
Leaders of the Samajwadi Party, the Trinamool Congress, the Rashtriya Lok Dal were also present at the event.
He was addressing a meeting in Patna attended by Opposition leaders.
While Yashwant Sinha’s exit from BJP is being closely watched, he is being compared to faces like S.M. Krishna or Rita Bahuguna Joshi who gave up their post in Congress and joined the BJP.
Experts believe that the public will hardly bother. But on the political front ahead of 2019 the RashtraManch has the ability to shake up things a bit. Poll watchers are keeping track of what impact the new Rashtra Manch will have on the BJP in Karnataka and 2019.
Many see a tinge of ego in Yashwant Sinha given that he along with Murli Manohar Joshi and LK Advani were sidelined soon after Modi won the election. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had once described Sinha as an 80-year-old job applicant.
Ever since Sinha along with Arun Shourie and Shatrughan Sinha started acting as dissidents, the trio has been seen as rebels but were not expelled.
Sinha meanwhile has also refused to be the silent spectator and a powerless observer in the Margdarshak Mandal.
In January, Sinha had said he would not quit the BJP, but dared the party to throw him out if it so wished.
He famously said Modi cannot fire me because he is scared. From demonetisation, GST to the issue of mob mentality in the garb of nationalism, Yashwant Sinha has been very vocal.
He has very often talked of how the old guard was being declared brain dead, implementation of GST, dangers to democracy, India witnessing poverty, decline in agriculture, manufacturing and production, poor national policy towards Pakistan and the Gujarat campaign being a blot.
Writing in The Indian Express on September 27 last year, in a piece titled “I need to speak up”, Sinha wrote: “I shall be failing in my national duty if I did not speak up even now against the mess the finance minister has made of the economy.”
Again, on April 17 this year, in an open letter to BJP MPs in The Indian Express titled “Dear friend, speak up”, Sinha reminded them how the BJP “had lost (its) way and “confidence in voters”.
Sinha also rued that the NDA did not ensure a smooth conduct of Parliament.
The BJP lambasting the recent tirades has been of the view that Yashwant Sinha was no more a BJP member rather a puppet of Congress.
While most election surveys show the BJP as the strongest contender, the government’s popularity is decreasing.
In such a situation, when a forum by a polished leader like Yashwant Sinha raises issues of common man, which tend to get lost in usual political flipflops, it is bound to create alternative public opinion.
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