The Bhartiya Janata Party Parliamentary board will meet on Wednesday to discuss the 'gross indicipline' by Uma Bharti and her supporters on November 28.
The meeting is likely to take place in the BJP headquarters and a drastic action against Bharti would be contemplated. "She could either be suspended or expelled from the party," a senior party leader told rediff.com.
Three days after the BJP announced, with great fanfare, Bharti has been made the party general secretary, the party has directed its workers not to join her padyatra to Ayodhya, after her supporters resorted to violence in Bhopal on Monday evening and she walked out of a meeting convened to elect Shivraj Singh Chouhan as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.
"Joining her padyatra would be act of indiscipline, as the yatra has no official sanction," Arun Jaitley, BJP general secretary, told newsmen at a press conference in Parliament house complex on Tuesday afternoon. He denied that the six MLAs of the state assembly had been suspended from the party for voting against the official nominee of the party for the chief ministership.
"No action has been taken on this count. The action has been taken for inciting their supporters and openly criticising the party," Jaitley said.
Giving a detailed explanation to the media, he said the party was willing to have a vote on any other candidate except Shivraj Singh Chouhan but Uma withdrew her name, when she saw that only 17 persons were supporting her.
"Then she decided to walk out and others joined her. We assumed that all the seveteen had voted against Shivraj," he said. He claimed that this showed the party believed in the internal democracy. "Out of 171 MLAs present, 154 voted for Chouhan," he added.
He refused to join issues with Govindacharya, who had taken up cudgels on behalf of Bharti and had blamed the BJP second-rung leaders for denying chief ministership to her. "I refuse to answer to extraneous questions," he said.
Jaitley denied that he had planted a story in Dainik Bhaskar against Bharti, in which it was mentioned that she had threatened to commit suicide. "Why should I answer what was written in a newspaper," he said.
