Rajnath Singh & Co fail to placate LK Advani

NEW DELHI: Less than 24 hours after celebrating Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s anointment, BJP leaders, jolted by LK Advani’s resignation, went into an exercise to placate him. Advani, who wanted the party to set up a parallel committee for election management of states, was upset with the way his party went about anointing Modi as head of a campaign committee.


On Sunday, the day of his elevation, Modi called up Advani and sought his blessings. Modi had later tweeted that he had got the party patriarch’s blessings, sending the message that the entire party was unanimous on him being named campaign committee chairman, a move seen as a step towards being named PM candidate. Party chief Rajnath Singh too had claimed that there was a consensus. However, when BJP leaders returned from their monsoon executive in Goa, they had more heat to face just the sweltering summer in Delhi.

The earlier plan was that Singh will go along with Modi to meet the sulking Advani. However, when Singh called up Advani to say that both of them wanted to meet him, Advani insisted that he will meet Singh alone, following which Singh went alone in the morning to meet him. Singh told him that the party would not accept his resignation. The parliamentary board met later in the day to reject Advani’s resignation.

Before the parliamentary board met, RSS leaders Bhaiyyaji Joshi and Suresh Soni asked Singh to assuage Advani, a Sangh source said. “It’s unfortunate. We hope the party leadership will persuade him to reconsider and take back his resignation,” RSS leader Ram Madhav told ET. However, neither BJP nor the Sangh were in the mood to rethink on the decision to elevate Modi, a person familiar with the developments said. “He is our patriarch. If he behaves like this what can we do,” a BJP leader said.

As soon as Advani’s letter became public, leaders headed for his residence to ask him to change his mind. Among them were Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar, who had reservations about making an announcement on Modi’s elevation in Goa in Advani’s absence. Exparty chief Nitin Gadkari, who had refused Advani’s proposal to head the poll panel for states, will be meeting Advani on Tuesday morning, when he reaches Delhi from Nagpur. Singh had decided to go ahead with Modi’s elevation sensing the sentiments in the party. A section, a BJP leader said, was of the view that Advani too should have kept in mind the aspirations of party workers to make Modi the party’s face.

Advani has apparently been upset from day one, though the party maintained he was unwell. Like his blog on the Karnataka debacle, his letter has brought out into the open not only the war in BJP but also his increasing isolation. One party leader said he had written around a dozen blogs which have brought internal party matters into public domain.