Prominent Bhartiya Janata Party leaders on Friday came out openly against their party leadership's decision to induct tainted and ousted Bahujan Samaj Party minister Babu Singh Kushwaha into the party fold.
While Maneka Gandhi, the party MP from Aonla, remained highly critical of the move, Yogi Adityanath, the saffron clad vociferous sadhu-turned-MP from Gorakhpur went a step further.
"I have made it loud and clear to the party's national leadership that I would rather consider quitting the party than brushing shoulders with a tainted person who have been inducted into the party," he said on Friday.
Training his guns at Kushwaha who was UP's family welfare minister until not very long ago, he went on to add, "After all I cannot overlook the fact that one of the persons inducted in the party was directly responsible for the large scale encephalitis deaths in Eastern UP, which cannot be delinked with the rampant corruption in the National Rural Health Mission program."
Earlier during the day Maneka Gandhi told mediapersons in Barielly, "I firmly disapprove of the controversial Kushwaha's entry into the party without any consultation with the party's state leaders."
She wondered, "what was the objective behind ushering in someone who was facing a CBI probe against serious charges of corruption at a time when the party was raising the banner against corruption."
Significantly, even Uma Bharti, who was entrusted charge of the party's election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, did not hesitate to express her resentment against Kushwaha's entry into the party during her visit to Kanpur earlier during the day.
Even as she had gone on record to say, "I will not campaign for the party if Kushwaha is allowed to stay on in the party", she backtracked on the issue later in the afternoon by observing, "Well, I would not like to make any comment on the issue outside the party forum."
