In a sudden development, Jaswant Singh has resigned as chairman of the Prestigious Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which he had refused to quit when he had a bitter parting of ways with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) four months ago.
Jaswant Singh’s resignation raised questions whether there was any rapprochement with the BJP but the 71-year-old leader ruled out any such possibility, saying his action was not under “any pressure” or done with “some calculation”.
The former Union minister had met Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on Monday and submitted his resignation, which has been accepted with effect from December 31, to enable him complete three reports. His tenure as PAC chairman ends in March 2010.
Meanwhile, BJP president Rajnath Singh gave a guarded response when asked for his reaction to Jaswant Singh’s unexpected resignation from the post of PAC chairman.
“No comments,” he said, adding, “Jaswant’s decision may have come because his term as chairman was coming to an end”.
Jaswant Singh, who was appointed as PAC chairman on August 6, was expelled from the party on August 19 for writing a book ‘Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence’, in which he had defended the Pakistan founder M A Jinnah and criticised Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel.
Soon after his expulsion, the BJP had demanded that Singh should quit the PAC chairman’s post as he had been nominated by the party to which he no longer belonged.
Senior BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and S S Ahluwalia, in fact, had met him on behalf of the party with a plea that he should quit as there was no provision for his removal.
