I was not in favour of Jaswant's expulsion: Advani

New Delhi, Sep 21 (PTI) Senior Bharatiya Janata Party
leader, L K Advani, Monday said he was not in favour of
Jaswant Singh's expulsion, contradicting the party's assertion
that he was part of the decision.

"These reports are correct that I was not in agreement
with the decision to expel Jaswant Singh," he told PTI-Bhasha
about the decision of the party's Parliamentary Board on
August 19 in Shimla in which he was present.

He, however, refused to elaborate saying, "I am not
interested in any further controversy."

The statement goes contrary to the assertion by BJP that
Advani was party to the decision to expel the Darjeeling MP
for eulogising Pakistan founder M A Jinnah and denigrating
Sardar Patel.

Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, while briefing reporters
on the deliberations of BJP's 'Chintan Baithak' in Shimla, had
said on August 21 that Advani had described the decision to
expel Jaswant as "painful but necessary".

"It is mentally painful to expel somebody who has been
with you for the past 30 years but what he wrote was against
the basic ideology of the party," Swaraj, considered close to
Advani, had quoted him as telling the BJP meet.

BJP President Rajnath Singh, while announcing the
Parliamentary Board's decision to expel Jaswant, had said: "I
had issued a statement yesterday (August 18) that the party
fully dissociates itself from the contents of the book. Today
I put up the matter before the Parliamentary Board which
decided to end his primary membership." (MORE) PTI KA
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