Rajnath Singh is the winner, says Digvijaya Singh

NEW DELHI: Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh has said BJP president Rajnath Singh was the biggest beneficiary of the Advani resignation drama as it showcased him as a ‘consensual alternative’, gaining the most from NarendraModi’s ‘discomfiture’. “This was a master stroke by Rajnath that has established that Modi is not acceptable to all,” despite a growing clamour to name Modi as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for 2014, within a section of the party, he said.


On Modi’s appointment as BJP’s campaign manager for 2014, he said that the Gujarat chief minister has only proven his strength in Gujarat. “He has been a disaster everywhere else. He is a creation of the media, absolute gas,” the Congress leader said, while welcoming Modi on the national stage.

Hinting that Rajnath Singh was clearly in the good books of RSS and Narendra Modi, the Congress general secretary said, “but why shouldn’t Rajnath want to be the Atal Bihari Vajpayee in BJP today? Everyone has prime ministerial ambitions,” This interpretation by Singh, known to light many a political fire, gave a new twist to the leadership issue within BJP that seems to be settling in Modi’s favour and has prompted alliance partner JD(U) to prepare for an early exit.

Rajnath Singh, who had played a crucial role last weekend in the party’s national executive meeting in Goa, where he named Modi as the chief of BJP’s election committee for 2014, was also instrumental in getting Nitin Gadkari to intervene in the negotiations with Advani.

While Advani’s resignation and the developments around it made it clear that Modi was not a consensus candidate, the settlement of the issue through timely invention by RSS established how Rajnath Singh could be an alternative with backing of the RSS, Singh said.

The manner in which the drama panned out over Advani’s resignation, the demonstrations outside his house followed by Nitin Gadkari’s timely entry and RSS leaderships talks with Advani has given an advantage to Rajnath Singh, he said.