LK Advani, who made BJP a fighting force, will address just a handful of rallies for the party
This could be the last electoral battle for BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani, and he seems to be ploughing a lonely furrow. The only big rally the 86-year-old has addressed so far ahead of the 16th Lok Sabha election has been the one at Sevagram in Maharashtra. He will address just a few more. Advani is contesting from Gujarat's Gandhinagar seat; considering it is a 'safe' BJP seat, he will not have to campaign much there. But his role on the national scene too seem to be quite limited.
BJP leaders are tight-lipped about Advani's role in the new BJP scenario where the party's PM candidate Narendra Modi is the party's face and voice. A senior leader told dna on condition of anonymity: "Advaniji is a respected senior leader and he will continue to command the respect of the party. He will be one of the prominent campaigners of the party."
But so far, he has not been assigned a prominent role. According to the tentative campaign schedule, prepared by the organisational committee headed by senior leader Mukthar Abbas Naqvi, Modi will address the maximum number of rallies, nearly 290 of them, followed by party president Rajnath Singh, who will address about 170 rallies.
Naqvi had said that other senior BJP leaders, such as Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Murli Manohar Joshi, will also address rallies. But the detailed schedule is yet to be worked out. Sources in Advani's office said that there is as yet no schedule of the number of rallies the patriarch is supposed to address, and that there has been no intimation from the party office.
Party leaders are quite uncomfortable answering questions about the tense undercurrent between Advani and Modi; Advani continues to praise, in however a convoluted way as he did in Sevagram, by placing Modi in the gallery of BJP chief ministers along with Madhya Pradesh's Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Chhattisgarh's Raman Singh, who have both won three assembly elections — just like Modi. Advani, however, took care to say that Modi will make an able prime minister.
Politics is a cruel game and no one knows it better than the BJP patriarch. Advani turned the BJP into a fighting force by using the Ayodhya masjid-temple dispute to catapult the marginal party to the national centre stage. Incidentally, it was also Advani who made Modi a strong man that he now is by standing by him when Modi was down and out after the 2002 Gujarat riots.
After turning the party into a winning national party in 1989 and 1991, he was stoic enough to pass on the crown to his lifelong party colleague Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1996. And he is now unwillingly giving space to Modi in the party and on the national scene. The irony is evident: Without Advani, there would have been no BJP as we know it today, and without today's BJP, there would be no Modi.
Vajpayee overshadowed Advani during the BJP-led NDA term in office and now Modi is ovreshadowing him in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}