JALANDHAR: Dissidence in the Punjab unit of the Bahujan Samaj Party is showing signs of rearing its head in the aftermath of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) elections in which its alliance with the Akali Dal (Panthic) and Akali Dal (Mann) put up a poor show. Two senior BSP leaders, Ram Lal Jassi and Jaswinder Pal Talwan, have in an open letter to party President Kanshi Ram, sough the sack of those leaders in Punjab who did not project the correct picture of BSP affairs in the state.
They have said that the alliance did not yield good results as even the campaign was in full swing, the BSP support kept changing from candidate to candidate creating much confusion. They said that they had told the state general secretary Avtar Singh Karim Puri in several meetings that the BSP should not meddle in Sikh religious affairs. The result was that today the BSP in Punjab was in a sorry state. The two have also expressed reservations about the party’s alliance with the Congress for the forthcoming assembly polls saying that this would not only be detrimental to the interests of the party but that the Congress would gain at the expense of the BSP. They said that all this had created confusion and resentment in minds of the party workers. They recommended that the BSP should embark on a “damage control exercise” to redeem its image.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 23, 1996
