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Raje quits, says targetted for being woman
NDTV Correspondent, Friday October 23, 2009, New Delhi

Former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje may have resigned from her post of Leader of the Opposition in Rajasthan Assembly, but she's not going quietly.

In a three-page letter to the BJP parliamentary board, Raje has said that the party targeted her because she's a woman.

"Women should be allowed to grow in the BJP. Rajasthan BJP leaders did not cooperate when I was chief minister," she said.

Raje also said that she was humiliated as order to resign came through media.

"I will work like an ordinary party worker and I made no conditions to resign," she further said.

And her resignation is unconditional, even though she has the support of 58 out of 78 BJP MLAs in Rajasthan. A BJP deadline for her to resign ended on Thursday.

Defiant till the end of a protracted standoff, Raje handed her resignation letter on Friday to senior BJP leader LK Advani instead of party president Rajnath Singh. The pressure to quit had primarily come from the BJP president.

Initially, Raje was to have been given a position in the party's central leadership in Delhi, but Rajnath Singh opposed this and insisted the resignation be unconditional. The Raje issue led to two camps within the BJP - Advani vs Rajnath.

The BJP has convened a Parliamentary Board meeting on Friday to discuss the Raje issue as well as the causes for the poor performance of the party in the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly polls.

Interestingly, while the party lost in three more states on Thursday, it is still obsessed with fixing blame for the loss in the Rajasthan elections six months ago. Or is this just the beginning and will heads roll in other states as well?

The party high command had in August asked Raje to accept the blame for the BJP's defeat in the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls and step down as Leader of Opposition. Raje held out till now.

The former Rajasthan chief minister had on Thursday missed her appointment with BJP's pointperson Sushma Swaraj. She was scheduled to meet the senior leader in New Delhi to discuss her fate. However, she remained incommunicado, leaving the party guessing about her next move.
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Tags: BJP, opposition, Vasundhara Raje
Comments
Posted by Anand on Oct 23, 2009
Raje must have worked liken a normal person when she was in office. Shy wanted her to be treated like a rani and many of the locals did not like it. Now she is complaining that non of the ministers worked with her, what was she doing this long. The Guju/Meema conflicts was sorted well by her, which was used by congress to put BJP in the back foot. Pilot from Congress tried all his luck to blame BJP for the issue, and congress did not provide any help and wanted the issue to blow which will help them. There are no major problems with her, but the style she worked. Have she been reachable to the locals and worked like a normal person instead of treating herself as a Rani, BJP may have come back to power in Rajasthan.
Posted by Karavadi Raghava Rao on Oct 23, 2009
She has been the CM of Rajastan for full term in spite of top leader BS Shekawath is opposed to her. Jaswanth Singh who was then a prominent leader in the party is her rival.Women always have important position in BJP. Her mother Late Vijayaraje Sindhia was one of the top leaders in BJP. Another woman Sushuma Swaraj now Dy Leader in Parliament is likely to succeed LKA as leader of the opposition.Vasundhara's son is an MP now.Anyhow her rival Rajnath Singh is going in December.Better luck for Vasundharaji then.She is a Mass leader.
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