I might have become BJP president: Uma Bharti

Continuing her attack against Bharatiya Janata Party President L K Advani, expelled party leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti on Thursday claimed that, in the past, a proposal to make her the party chief had gone unimplemented.

"I received the proposal after the then BJP President M Venkaiah Naidu bowed out of office," she said while addressing a public meeting in her home territory Bundelkhand on the 17th day of her 'Ram-Roti padyatra' from Bhopal to Ayodhya.

Next on Uma Bharti's agenda: An autobiography

Bharti cautioned Advani to quit his post before the Mumbai convention otherwise both he and the party would suffer.

"After the controversy about Advani's remarks on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, I asked him to resign and even urged the convening of a BJP meeting for expelling its president," she added.

Bharti said time was ripe to dissolve the BJP, like what had happened with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and form a party centred on Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay's ideology.

Describing herself as a disciplined Vishwa Hindu Parishad worker, she assured that she would abide by the organisation's directives regarding temple construction.

Uma Bharti: BJP's didi out in the wilderness

"My ideology is swaraj, swabhimaan and swadeshi," she said.

The sanyasin also claimed that Congress President Sonia Gandhi's citizenship could have been ended in six months if she were to be the Home Minister or Law Minister in the Union Government.

Bharti, who has handled Youth and Sports and Coal Ministry, before she was sent off as BJP's campaign committee chairman to be made the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in 2003, said the issue had come up in the government and if the government really wanted, it could have ended Congress President's citizenship on the basis of 'reciprocity clause' in the Citizenship Act. The move somehow did not take off for whatever reasons.

"I cannot give out more details because I am bound by the oath of secrecy but I can tell you that I may come out with some 'disclosures' over the next few days," she remarked.