Wednesday, December 28 2005 14:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Will the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stung by a series of sting operations, be able to wipe off the stigma of a 'Black December' for the saffron parivar during the National Convention of the party, which began here today (Dec 28,2005).

This has become a major question as the party unveils its plans for the future at its silver jubilee celebrations beginning today, a day after party organising secretary Sanjay Joshi resigned in the wake of what has come to be known as the CD scandal.

Joshi, who as Organizing Secretary was deputed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to BJP resigned after an audio cassette and later a VCD reportedly showing him apparently in a compromising position with a woman threatened to generate a fresh controversy.

The BJP, however, has officially been maintaining that Joshi, to whom L K Advani had submitted his resignation as the party chief in the middle of the year after the Jinnah controversy, has been a victim of disinformation and has stepped down for the time being till the inquiry is over and he is exonerated.

The saffron party, which came into being in this metropolis 25 years ago with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its Chief, has always projected itself as a 'party with an difference,' a claim which helped it to cobble an anti-Congress alliance to form a coalition at the Center in 1998. Its first go at the power at the Centre in 1996 lasted for only 13 days.

Joshi's resignation has come at the worst possible time for the BJP which has been smarting under the expulsion of six of its MPs from Parliament in the wake of the 'cash for query'scam exposed in a sting operation earlier this month.

BJP received another shock with another sting operation on the MPLAD scheme project allocation.

Advani, in his presidential address, asserted "We have to reverse the distressing descent of some members into the disreputable and corrupt Congress culture. Admittedly their numbers are miniscule. But unless we resolve to stop this tendency altogether we will lost our proud claim to being a party with a difference."