Why Vajpayee dropped Jaswant, Mahajan in 1998

September 28, 2017 17:38

Much has been said of Yashwant Sinha's column, 'I need to speak up now', in the Indian Express yesterday which has kicked up a huge storm and leading to his son Jayant Sinha penning a rebuttal in a blog in Times of India.

Now Kanchan Gupta, commissioning editor and commentator with ABP News, who was part of Prime Minister A B Vajpayee's office during NDA 1, has written a piece, 'I too need to speak up now', rebutting Sinha Sr's version of why Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan were benched by Vajpayee (he said the prime minister had played by the rulebook in doing so, as both of them had lost the Lok Sabha elections).

In contrast, Sinha wrote, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had overlooked Jaitley's electoral failure and made him the finance minister.

Here's an excerpt from what Kanchan has written:

'Half an hour, or maybe 45 minutes later, Sudarshan left. Shakti and I were summoned and a very distressed Vajpayee, his face resembling a thundercloud, dictated a short letter, instructing Jaswant Singh's name to be dropped from the list of Ministers. A new list was printed and attached to the letter.'

Kanchan winds up his article thus:

'Yashwant Sinha omits mentioning that he was shipped out of the Finance Ministry and Jaswant Singh brought in as the Finance Minister in July 2002. He also makes no mention of the reasons why he had to switch jobs with Singh. We can deal with that another day.'

And, yes, we can't wait! And, you can read Kanchan Gupta's article here.

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