After a long standoff with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership, Vasundhra Raje today gave clear indications that she might step down as leader of the Opposition in Rajasthan as directed by party President Rajnath Singh, saying she was committed to serve the party “with a post or without it”.
Raje, who has been summoned to Delhi on August 31 by the BJP high command to meet senior leader M Venkaiah Naidu, said she was a “disciplined soldier” of the party and its order was “supreme” to her. “I am committed to serve the party with a post or without it,” she said in a statement.
Naidu has been appointed as the pointsman to defuse the crisis in the Rajasthan BJP unit. After having adopted a defiant posture, she told reporters “when there is a problem of any sort within a family, it is only natural that you would sit down and talk it out”.
Raje will meet Naidu on Monday to discuss the future course of action. The party high command had given her time till August 30 to put in her papers. The former Rajasthan chief minister, who held a show of strength of BJP MLAs on Wednesday attended by 70 of the 78 legislators, said she would like to go for talks as quickly as possible to sort out these problems.
Holding Raje responsible for the party’s poor performance in the state Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had earlier this month asked her to step down as leader of the Opposition.