After months of internal wrangling with the BJP, a disgruntled Yashwant Sinha launched a political platform called ‘Rashtra Manch’ on Tuesday. He was joined by other politicians including BJP’s MP Shatrughan Sinha. Yashwant, former Union finance minister, reiterated during the launch that his decision to begin the platform is because he and colleagues were not given a forum by BJP to air their views. Shatrughan defended his support for the new platform by saying it is not an opposition movement to BJP but a forum through which they could present matters of national interest. Therefore, it should be a course for BJP’s leadership to punish them.
Yashwant Sinha on Wednesday clarified that he would not part ways with BJP unless it is the party’s wish. He added that they will have to kick him out. He remarked that he formed ‘Rashtra Manch’ to act as an avenue for channeling matters of national interest and challenge the government on some issues. Yashwant concluded his statement by saying it was more prominent being an Indian citizen than being a BJP member.
Cause of Farmers
During the platform launch on Tuesday, Yashwant complained to government and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of reducing farmers to the status of beggars. He claimed that BJP fabricated statistics during the Economic Survey presented to parliament to suit their interests for garnering votes.
He defended his statement on Wednesday saying he took up the matter of farmers in his capacity as a citizen. He cleared himself from any blame stating that he made his views not to oppose any political party or person but to object to policies that did not benefit the citizens.
Yashwant said that Rashtra Manch is a movement the farmers and unemployed people including the youth could rely upon as those sitting in Delhi and Bhopal may not be aware of their plights. He noted that investigating agencies are improperly being used against people with a different line of thought from the government. He alleged that fear should not be propagated to individuals thinking outside BJP.
He then went on to say that the Economic Survey referred to the farmer’s plight, unemployment, and education related problems. The problems were not new to India. Sinha pointed out that the government has failed in addressing the issues for the last three years.
In a different development, the BJP veteran is expected to take part in a farmer’s protest on Thursday against a power project in Narsinghpur district of Uttar Pradesh state.
