Rajnath takes responsibility for BJP`s defeat in LS polls

New Delhi, June 20 (PTI) India's main opposition BJP
President Rajnath Singh Saturday took responsibility for the
party's Lok Sabha debacle but ruled out distancing itself from
Hindutva idelogy.

Asserting that it was not not a national defeat for
the party as the results varied from state to state, he said
there was no no questioning of holding an individual
accountable for the debacle.

"We can't hold one person accountable for failure and
the review of the defeat is an ongoing process. BJP believes
in collective success and collective failure," Singh said in
his inaugural address to the two-day National Executive that
began Saturday.

He said if one person has to take the blame "I am
taking reponsibility".

This is the first major gathering of the party leaders
to discuss the electoral failure.

Singh said that the poll outcome showed that the
country was proceeding towards a bi-polar polity and defended
the issuesof Hindutva raised in the election campaign.

"We do not regret the issues we have raised. These
issues whether communal reservation, communal budgeting or
soft approach to terrorism were all in national interest,"
Singh said.

Singh talked about "national justice" and said the
elections was not a referendum on cultural nationalism or
Hindutva.

Singh said that Hindutva was an eternal and
geo-political concept but the party could not articulate it
properly.

"We need to articulate (Hindutva) in the contemporary
idiom," party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said, quoting
Singh as saying in the meeting.

Asked about a feeling in the party that Varun
Gandhi's hate speeches cost the party in the elections, Prasad
said BJP believed in the ideology propounded by Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyay, who had set the principle
of "justice to all and appeasement of none"

With voices of dissent emerging on the party for
fixing responsibility for the poll debacle, Singh said that
both in victory and defeat, the party believes in "collective
responsibility".

Noting that right wing space has never been vacated in
the country, the BJP President said, "in ushering a change,
the politics of right has always played a very crucial role".

On the right wing space, Singh said BJP must be seen
in contrast with the Congress and "any confusion will be
politically detrimental".

Singh has asked the party colleagues to give their
suggestions in writing which will be discussed threadbare in
the chintan baithak (brain storming session) of the BJP which
will be held soon. PTI