[IAC#RG] Jethmalani expelled from BJP for 6 years

Jethmalani expelled from BJP for 6 years

The expulsion of 89-year-old Jethmalani, who is a member of Rajya Sabha, by the BJP Parliamentary Board comes weeks after he had barged into a Parliamentary Party meeting

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/jethmalani-expelled-from-bjp-for-6-years-113052800480_1.html

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has expelled Ram Jethmalani, Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha, for six years from the party's primary membership, on charges of breach of discipline. On November 25, 2012, the senior lawyer was issued a showcause notice for criticising the party leadership and demanding the resignation of former party president Nitin Gadkari.

Jethmalani had faced the wrath of the BJP leadership after he questioned the decision of Sushma Swaraj, leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and Arun Jaitley, leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, to oppose the appointment of Ranjit Sinha as director of the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The BJP leadership said Jethmalani had failed to respond to charges of embarrassing statements against the party and of levelling allegations against Swaraj and Jaitley without "sufficient cause".

"The central parliamentary board, after considering all your replies, responses and letters, was of the unanimous opinion that you have indulged in breach of discipline. The board decided to expel you for a period of six years from the primary membership of the party. You have failed to show any sufficient cause for challenging the authority and legitimacy of the party by stating the BJP leadership has no guts to take action against you," senior party leader Ananth Kumar wrote to Jethmalani.

"You had defied the whip of the party by not voting for the election of the members of the committee on public undertakings on May 6. The above action is without prejudice," Kumar wrote.

Cong gained 191, BJP lost 144 assembly seats post 2009

Kapil Sibal recently in 'Devil's Advocate' rejected popular perception that Congress did not enjoy popular mandate

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/cong-gained-191-bjp-lost-144-assembly-seats-post-2009-113052801108_1.html

After a spate of scams, corruption charges that scalped several Union ministers and washed out Parliament sessions – the general perception is that Congress as a political party has been losing ground.

Surprisingly, statistics reveal otherwise. In the 21 states that went to assembly polls post May 2009 general elections; a bird's eye-view of the performance of the two national parties the Congress and the BJP shows that the Congress gained 191 seats and lost 86 seats while the BJP in the same period gained only 51 seats and lost more than double that number 144 seats.

It was Union minister Kapil Sibal in the CNN-IBN programme "Devil's Advocate" recently, who rejected the popular perception that the Congress did not enjoy popular mandate and cited the performance of the Congress vis a vis the BJP in the past two years where 11 states had gone to polls and asserted that the Congress has been gaining ground while the BJP which has been gradually losing seats over the past four years.

It is striking that in several states – Puducherry, Kerala , Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura – the BJP has not managed to bag a single seat over the past two assembly polls ie in a decade.