Uma Bharati

New Delhi : Suspended Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Uma Bharati has written to party chief L.K. Advani seeking both forgiveness and the party’s apology in a self-righteous letter evidently aimed at reconciliation.

Bharati, suspended by the BJP when she walked out of a party meeting after a bitter showdown with Advani in full gaze of cameras earlier this month, made an emotional plea to Advani as well as former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Yet, she tempered her apology with a demand that the party apologize to her for certain issues. Lamenting the BJP’s shift from its original principles, she kept projecting her personal setback as symptomatic of a national problem. “I am not writing to you in the hope of revocation of my suspension, because on that issue I also have to do some thinking. The decision will not be one-sided but from both sides,” she remarked.

“I am willing to apologize to you for challenging you to take action against me for indiscipline,” she wrote, describing Advani as a father figure who had inspired and mentored her in politics. But she cloaked the obvious climb-down with indignation and “grief” over the way the party had diverted the issue of “political probity” and turned it into a matter of discipline against her.

She urged the BJP leadership to take bold decisions to chart a fresh course for the party, which, she felt, was going astray.