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Kalyan Singh expelled from BJP

A disciplinary committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party has unanimously recommended expulsion of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh from the party for six years.

In a three-page report submitted to party president Kushabhau Thakre this afternoon, the five-member committee said the public statements of Kalyan Singh after his suspension had damaged the party's image.

The committee, headed by J P Mathur, had O P Kohli, Satynarayan Jatia, Jayantiben Mehta and Ravishankar Prasad as members.

Thakre will formally announce Kalyan Singh's expulsion at a press conference later in the day.

Kalyan Singh was served a show-cause notice for his public statements in Delhi and Aligarh in which, the committee felt, he tried to denigrate the party's image and spoke against party functionaries. The committee said Singh had accepted in his reply (to the show-cause notice) of December 3 that he had made these statements.

The committee felt Kalyan Singh's reply to the notice, which he had released to the press, had questioned the organisation, its policies and also the party leadership. His reply was ''full of unsubstantiated and unrealistic accusations against the prime minister,'' the committee observed.

The panel rejected Kalyan Singh's contention that there had been a campaign for his removal for the past ten months and his suspension was malafide and discriminatory.

The disciplinary committee said all the statements made by Kalyan Singh about the prime minister were baseless and mere accusations.

Kalyan Singh had crossed all limits while making these accusations, the committee observed, and said his remarks that the party was promoting personality cult and now had place only for those having vested interests amounted to 'gross acts of indiscipline'. This showed that he had no faith in the party's principles and policies, the committee noted.

UNI

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