The Gujjar agitation forced not only the venue of the national executive to be shifted from Jaipur to Delhi, but saw extensive police cordoning of the BJP headquarters and the Parliament annexe where the meeting was being held. The BJP however made all attempts to ignore the elephant in the room.
Party President Rajnath Singh's inaugural address had only two lines on the stir and he did not even deign to refer to the community by name, saying instead, "The sad and unfortunate incidents of violence that have taken place on the issue of reservation have shocked not only the people of Rajasthan but also the entire country." He asked for calm and patience from the people in dealing with the issue. Interestingly, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje remained absent from the meet, she is expected to attend tomorrow's concluding session.
Earlier in the day and even when reporting for various states were being done, several party office bearers, including a senior leader from Uttar Pradesh tried to raise the mishandling of the issue of reservations for Gujjars by the Vasundhara Raje government, but they were hushed up. "We are on a winning streak overall and we do not want to spoil the focus of the meet, which is to prepare for coming elections," said an office bearer of the party.
Singh too devoted most of his address to attacking the Congress-led government at the Centre on various counts and projected the BJP as the "obvious frontrunner" for the next Lok Sabha elections. Referring to the Union budget, Rajnath Singh said that the budget was a faulty product but had good marketing and packaging. "Perhaps our finance minister has also fallen prey to the psychology of modern marketing," he said. He said that deputy chairman of the planning commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia's comment that growth cannot be scarificed at the altar of controlling prices was painful. "I want to ask not just Ahluwalia but also our finance minister and economist prime minister whether development is only possible by crushing the common man under the burden of inflation?" he said.
Singh demanded that a special session of Parliament be convened to discuss the agrarian crisis in India along with inflation be called so that a road map can be set out to get Indian farmers out of the morass they are in.
