Hyderabad: Leader of Opposition in the Rajasthan legislative assembly Gulabchand Kataria took former assembly speaker Kailash Meghwal allegations head-on by saying he is ready to face any action from the party high command. In an exclusive interview with Sachin Sharma, Regional Editor of ETV Bharat the saffron leader explicitly said that the party can remove him if he has done anything wrong.
Reacting to the allegations that Meghwal, who had shot-off a letter to BJP president J P Nadda, the senior BJP leader Kataria said that he will clear all doubts during the legislature meeting on Thursday.
"Let the meeting of the legislature party take place, whatever decision is taken I will accept it. I am ready to face any action, I will not plead for my deeds," Kataria said.
Having a long political career of four decades, Kataria explained the reason behind BJP falling short of the majority during the panchayat poll.
"During the panchayat poll, we had just six MLAs in six districts and the rest were Congress and independents. Despite that our performance was good as out of 200 seats of Zila Parishad BJP won 90 seats and Congress won 99 seats. I don't see much margin between the Congress and BJP,” Kataria stressed.
Kataria went on to add that legal action is required to stop leaders who change the party while contesting elections on symbols so that horse-trading could be stopped in politics.
The former home minister in the Government of Rajasthan, Kataria defended Vasundhara Raje Scindia who was seldom visible during the panchayat poll in the state.
"Whenever she is required to make her presence, she is always available. She attends the meeting of the core committee. As national vice president, she acts according to her post. In the state election whenever I used to call her, she was available. It was not necessary to involve all the leaders in the panchayat poll. In fact, she was disturbed because her daughter-in-law was not well apart from herself getting covid positive which forced her to be in isolation,“ Kataria said.
The member of the central working committee of the party Katria explained that none of the BJP state presidents has ever become the chief minister of any state. He asserted that being the state president does not mean he or she is the chief ministerial face. He also denied himself being in the race of chief ministerial.
“As I have spent around 40 years in Rajasthan politics, I have seen more than 10 state presidents but only two people have become the CM of the state. One is Bhairon Singh Sekhawat and the other is Vasundhara ji. It is the media that cooks the story on its own, we must avoid such things. In fact, I do not see myself as a chief ministerial candidate. I will do my duty, whatever party will ask me to do,“ Kataria, the eight times MLA said.
On the question of groupism between Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Punia and Vasundhara, the former parliamentarian stressed that he does not belong to any group.
Kataria slammed the Ashok Gehlot government in the state and claimed that Congress only made a long list of promises —creating jobs for the unemployed, waiving off the farmers' loan, regularisation of contractual employees or providing compensation to jobless people — but dismally failed to fulfil any.
He pointed out that even in the last assembly election which was held in 2018 the difference of winning margin between Congress and BJP was just 50,000 votes.
Katria then went on to say how groupism in the Congress party made Sachin Pilot uncomfortable and his hard work is being ignored in the party. Further, he said the Ashok Gehlot government is going through a phase of cold war within the party and soon explode once Gehlot expands his Cabinet.
Having been booked by the CBI in the Sheikh fake encounter killing, Katarai accepted his mistake over the comment he made on Maharana Pratap but stressed that he has apologised thrice for his statement.
