Shatrughan provokes BJP to take action

Outspoken MP Shatrughan Sinha, in his just launched biography, virtually provoked the BJP leadership to take action against him despite accepting his “open dissidence” after he was sidelined during Bihar Assembly polls.

In “Anything But Khamosh” launched on Wednesday, Sinha dubbed the BJP leadership “helpless” for it could not take disciplinary action against him for publicly speaking against the party and boasting that he could win elections even as an independent candidate given his equation with senior leaders from other parties.

 “One heard that they’d be taking action against Shatrughan Sinha after the Bihar elections. I said, I didn’t know my people were so helpless that they had to wait for an election to take action. That too against a man who had won with vote share percentage of more than 55 per cent which even our prime minister and Arvind Kejriwal didn’t reach; a man who could stand as an Independent and had the support of many, right from Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad to Rahul Gandhi,” Sinha wrote in the 7th chapter: “The Rough and Tumble Of a Life in Politics”.

The party grudgingly overlooked repeated defiance from Sinha much before it decided to crack whip on Dharbhanga MP Kirti Azad, suspending him for taking on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the DDCA case.

 In a direct challenge, Sinha reiterated his earlier offensive comment in the biography: “That’s why I had made the statement, those who want to take action against me must remember Newton’s third law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”.

He said that unlike his veteran seniors L K Advani and M M Joshi, who did not open  their mouths despite sitting outside, “SS was not one to exercise the RSS-style discipline or restraint”. 

He claimed that due to his confrontationist strategy, he bounced back because “I was on the side of the truth” – a self patting on the back he does in the book due to the BJP’s poor show in Assembly polls.