NEW DELHI: Senior Janata Dal leader George Fernandes has resigned from the party’s political affairs committee and the national executive in protest against the “outbursts” of another party leader Sharad Yadav.
Sharad Yadav had in an interview to an English weekly branded Fernandes a “Congress (I) puppet” and said he (Fernandes) had always been against the Mandal commission recommendations favoring reservation for backward classes in government jobs.
Fernandes is understood to have expressed his support for the new package on reservation inducting the economic criterion in job quotas for backward classes.
The former minister who is now away in Raipur sent his resignation to the party president S.R.Bommai saying he could no longer put up with the attacks against him by Sharad Yadav whom he described as the party’s “chief executive”.
He complained that he had been at the receiving end of Yadav’s criticism for quite a long time now but he could not accept this offensive against him in print.
Fernandes also told the party president he was dissociating himself from the party camps currently being organized in Kamataka and Maharashtra which former premier V.P.Singh and Bommai are slated to address.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 11, 1991
