Kiran Bedi, who recently joined the BJP, on Sunday said she had tried several times to talk to social activist Anna Hazare on the phone but was not able to do so as the anti-corruption crusader was either “sleeping or taking rest.”
Ms. Bedi, a former IPS officer and member of Mr. Hazare’s core team when he was leading the anti-corruption campaign, was reacting to reports that the latter was unhappy over her failure to inform him about her move to join the BJP.
Ms. Bedi said she would call him again on Monday.
“I called Annaji on the telephone; sometimes he was sleeping and sometimes he was taking rest. I tried calling Annaji yesterday and will again call him tomorrow,” Ms. Bedi told the media when asked about the reports that Mr. Hazare was unhappy with her.
Ms. Bedi said she knows what Mr. Hazare would say to her and added that he would “smile.”
Ms. Bedi, 65, entered the BJP fold in the presence of its chief Amit Shah and Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and Harsh Vardhan at the party’s headquarters here on January 15. The saffron outfit has said that she will contest the February 7 Delhi Assembly elections.
Ms. Bedi and AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal were part of Mr. Hazare’s core team when the anti-corruption activist was leading his agitation to press for the passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament.
“World’s most beautiful face”
Ms. Bedi said that in Prime Minister Narendra Modi the BJP had with it the “world’s most beautiful face” as she rebutted the AAP’s claim that she was brought in by the saffron outfit because it did not have a face of its own in Delhi.
“The BJP has got the world’s most beautiful face with it, i.e. Narendra Modi and his leadership. After that we are just stars who are revolving around him,” the former Team Anna member said as she shot down the AAP’s charge that she was inducted into the BJP for being its face here for Delhi polls.
“Delhi will get all its resources from the Central government and it is the Centre which will give us energy,” Ms. Bedi told reporters here.
The AAP had attacked the BJP over the induction of Ms. Bedi, saying it had been done to shield Mr. Modi in the event of the party’s defeat in the Assembly elections.
Ms. Bedi had rejected the Congress’s charge that she had used Mr. Hazare to fulfil her political ambitions, saying that joining the anti-corruption crusader was the “right thing to do” during the Lokpal agitation.
Congress leader Ajay Maken alleged that Ms. Bedi and Mr. Kejriwal were “opportunists of the first order.”
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