Setback for LK Advani as Nitin Gadkari refuses to head poll panel

NEW DELHI: Former BJP president Nitin Gadkari has turned down senior party leader LK Advani’s proposal to make him head of a panel to oversee poll strategy in states headed for elections later this year, saying he does not want to take such a big responsibility at this juncture.


“I have not sought any larger role from the party president ( Rajnath Singh). I would like to continue as a party worker,” Gadkari told ET, when asked about Advani’s offer to make him the chief of an election management committee for the poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. Gadkari added, in an exclusive interview, “I myself want to fight the Lok Sabha elections from Nagpur and want to focus on that. At this time, to take up such a big responsibility will be a problem for me.

So I would be satisfied with a smaller task.” Nagpur, with a 45% Muslim population and five consecutive wins for the Congress, will be a tough seat, he conceded. Advani had proposed Gadkari’s name to BJP president for the election management panel, a move that was widely seen as an attempt to queer the pitch for Gujarat CM and the party’s PM candidate Narendra Modi.

Gadkari’s refusal indicates the removal of another hurdle in Modi’s path, especially so since it comes close on the heels of BJP’s efforts to play down Advani’s favourable comparison of MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan with Modi. Gadkari has conveyed his disinclination to accept Advani’s offer to the party president, a person familiar with the matter said.

The 85-year-old Advani, who has never ruled himself out of the prime ministerial race, unlike Rajnath Singh and Gadkari, had earlier vehemently opposed a second term for Gadkari as party chief because of allegations of business irregularities against him. Gadkari refused to get drawn into the leadership debate and maintained that Advani’s statement was “misinterpreted”.

The party president had also taken this line on Monday while making it clear that Modi was undoubtedly “the most popular” leader in the country. “The leadership issue is not a question of debate in the party. This is only in the media, not in BJP,” Gadkari said. Advani’s praise for Chouhan at a time when Modi was moving towards centre stage in the party did not go down well with a large section in BJP, which was of the view that it was time to clear the confusion on the leadership issue.

This pressure could build up at the Goa national executive on June 8 and 9, a party leader said. Gadkari, when asked whether the leadership issue would come up at the national executive meeting, said the focus would be on the assembly elections this year and on beginning preparations for Lok Sabha elections. “We will go into the positive aspects of BJP governments in states and the NDA regime and show how the economist prime minister has failed.

His government has been a failure in all aspects — economy, political, internal security, Naxalism,” said Gadkari, who may move the political resolution at the national executive.