BJP asks Arun Shourie to clarify his remarks

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday asked senior leader Arun Shourie to explain his statements against the party leadership.

"The party has called for a clarification from Arun Shourie (over his remarks yesterday). This is not not a show-cause notice. Nor has he been sent a notice seeking explanation. Only a clarification has been sought," BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said in New Delhi on Tuesday.

The clarification asks Shourie to clarify his comments made on Monday in a press conference and in an interview to a TV news channel. The notice may be a step before the party expels Shourie.

Shourie on Monday said BJP President Rajnath Singh was behaving like “Alice in Blunderland” and challenged him to sack him for “indiscipline”.

"In my view, the BJP is a kati patang (a loose kite). Unless it is got hold of swiftly by--I don't see people within the party who now have such authority. If anybody can do it, it is only the RSS ," Shourie, a former union minister, told a TV channel in an interview.

Shourie, after the interview, told reporters the BJP should do what the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong had said: "bombard the headquarters. Clean up everybody from the top. Bring ten-fifteen people from the states who are competent, honest and dedicated and reconstruct immediately."

The BJP, last week, expelled senior party leader Jaswant Singh for flouting its ideology by writing a biography of Pakistani leader M A Jinnah.

Singh wasn’t given any notice and was told about his expulsion over the phone by Rajnath Singh.