NEW DELHI, February 15: In a major faux pas, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vice-president K L Sharma today stated that the issue of prime ministership in the party was still open, only to backtrack from his statement just hours later.At a press conference, Sharma had said that the decision to make senior BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee the prime minister, if the party came to power, would be endorsed only after considering the views of its newly-elected Lok Sabha members.
However, later in the day, Sharma said that his answers to a question at today's press conference was quoted out of context. "The issue of prime ministership is not open as all party nominees and allies has accepted Vajpayee's leadership," he said.
The BJP also asserted that the party's choice for prime ministership was Atal Behari Vajpayee and the issue was a decided chapter and not open. The reports in a section of the media was a "deliberate and mischievous" attempt to distort his statement out of context with a clear motive todamage the BJP, Sharma claimed. He said he had stated clearly that unlike the Congress and the United Front, there was total unanimity in the BJP regarding the prime ministerial candidate.
Earlier, at the conference, Sharma had criticised the Congress and the United Front for not projecting any candidate as their prime ministerial choice.
Replying to a question on why the BJP had not projected their prime ministerial choice till the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, Sharma said that the BJP was not in a position to form a government at the Centre in the earlier elections.
The Congress, on the other hand, had a history of projecting their leader well before the elections, he said. But now they had lost credibility and support and this was why they had not been able to project anybody as their choice, he added.
When asked whether the Uttar Pradesh scenario would be repeated at the Central level in case the BJP failed to get a clear majority, Sharma said the party was of the view that anybody who wanted to joinit on his own would be welcome.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
