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The Bharatiya Janata Party may have finally got a grip on the problems in its Uttar Pradesh unit with the dissidents now demanding withdrawal of disciplinary action against two of their leaders as well as rollback of the police action against some independent legislators.
The dissidents have agreed to meet the central leadership to discuss their grievances provided the above condition was met.
In his second attempt, former chief minister Rajnath Singh finally succeeded to bringing the dissidents to the negotiating table.
He arrived in Lucknow on Tuesday morning and then took everyone by surprise in the afternoon by driving down to the residence of Ganga Bhakt Singh, the leader of the dissidents.
Ganga Bhakt Singh was holding a meeting with the other dissidents at that time. Rajnath Singh was closeted with them for nearly two-and-a-half hours.
Earlier, Samajwadi Party's blatant attempt to topple the five-month old Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party-BJP coalition was stymied by Congress president Sonia Gandhi's lack of enthusiasm for the same.
Taking advantage of this development, Rajnath Singh had contacted the dissidents for a patch-up. This time, Ganga Bhakt Singh readily agreed to meet him.
"After all, Rajnath Singh is a senior leader of the party. If he is coming down all the way for a dialogue, we cannot shut the door on him," he said.
On his part, Rajnath said after the Tuesday meeting, "I have succeeded in convincing them to put their grievances before the party's central leadership."
However, before doing any such thing, the dissidents wanted revocation of the suspension of Ganga Bhakt Singh and Ramasheesh Rai, the two office-bearers of the recently formed 'Save BJP Action Committee'.
Also, during her crackdown on some independents with criminal antecedents, Chief Minister Mayawati had got fresh cases registered against independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh, better known as Raja Bhaiyya, who had led eight independents to the state governor and declared withdrawal of support to the ruling coalition.
"No discussion can be held without withdrawal of all such vindictive action taken by the state BJP leadership as well as by Mayawati," Rai told mediapersons in Lucknow.
Ganga Bhakt Singh was also firm on some other demands. "We want all BJP ministers to quit. The party should extend outside support to the Mayawati government," he insisted.
However, state BJP chief Vinay Katiyar was not in a forgiving mood. "Disciplinary action against Ganga Bhakt Singh and Ramasheesh Rai would be withdrawn only if they expressed regret over their recent acts that was directly against the interests of the party," he said.
More reports from Uttar Pradesh
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