OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, Aug. 25: Jaswant Singh received sympathy from Singapore today. Amar Singh called to sound him about joining the Samajwadi Party.
Amar later told a television channel he had told the expelled BJP leader: “You are not unknown to us, we are with you.”
The Samajwadi general secretary, who is recovering from a kidney transplant in a Singapore hospital, said he decided to call after reading former L.K. Advani aide Sudheendra Kulkarni’s newspaper column which described the changing face of the BJP.
Amar said he had not directly invited Jaswant into his party, but had indicated that the Samajwadis would be happy to receive him.
“It will be my fortune if I can do something for him to be in active politics through the platform of the Samajwadi Party,” Amar told another news channel.
According to a PTI report, Amar said Jaswant told him the two of them could talk about the matter after the Samajwadi leader recovered fully and returned to India.
Many Samajwadis, however, believe that the Darjeeling MP would be a misfit in their party. “He is a different kind of person and will probably not choose to be with the SP. What will he do in our party?” a senior leader said.
It makes little sense for Jaswant to be associated with another party when he is MP from an area that is hardly a BJP constituency. Besides, party-hopping puts him at risk of expulsion from Parliament.
The BJP has already tried to get Singh removed as the public accounts panel chairman in Parliament, the decision on which is the Speaker’s prerogative, sources said.
Amar’s chat with Jaswant today was not his first. Last year, the former foreign minister had apparently visited Amar’s home during the political bargaining on the nuclear deal to see if the Samajwadis could be kept away from the Congress.
Soon enough, Amar was telling reporters how Jaswant had contacted him. Today, he said he had not read Jaswant’s book on Jinnah.
Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh have been known to invite dacoits, criminals and other anti-socials in their party.
By inviting Jaswant Singh are they raising their own bar or lowering Jaswant Singh's and now consider him as one of their own? After all once Mulayam was known as Maulana Mulayam so he can understand Jaswant's new found love for Jinnah.
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