The ‘humanitarian’ issue takes a new political turn with BJP leadership joining hands to bail out the ‘innocent’ Foreign Minister Sushma Sawaraj out of the quagmire the party has been caught on the issue of releasing Lalit Modi’s paper. But one thing is clear that the party has been reeling under infighting. Faced with the Congress’s escalating demand for the dismissal of Sushma for helping ‘fugitive’ Modi, even the Finance Minster Arun Jaitley too asserted that the Foreign Minister had acted “with good intentions”. The Finance Minister’s strong pitch for his beleaguered colleague came in the wake of insinuations in certain BJP quarters that the disclosures about Sushma marked the revival of the kind of factional feuds that had gripped the party before Narendra Modi imposed his stamp as undisputed boss. Jaitley and Sushma have often been on different pages on important issues. Last year, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was in the eye of a storm following reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ticked off his son for seeking political favours. During the last budget session of Parliament, Transport and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari had to fend off persistent opposition demands for his resignation after his family-owned company, was faulted by the Comptroller and Auditor General for violating the conditions for interest subsidy it had been extended by the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency. On Sunday, it was the turn of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to court controversy. The fresh one to come up is the documents released by Modi’s lawyer claiming that Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje allegedly supported the former IPL chief’s immigration plea when she was Leader of the Opposition in 2011. The documents claimed that she gave her testimony supporting Modi on the condition that it will not be revealed to Indian authorities. How murky is the ‘humanitarian’ approach of BJP is the question even Prime Minister will have to ask?
