Gestures of reconciliation have ended speculation that the two leaders have fallen out with each other, particularly over Modi’s indifference towards his mentor.
If developments of the last two days are anything to go by, all is now well between BJP leader LK Advani and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Gestures of reconciliation have ended speculation that the two leaders have fallen out with each other, particularly over Modi’s indifference towards his mentor.
On March 25, Advani dedicated a post on his official blog to Modi’s featuring on the cover of Time magazine. In the post, he criticised the US for not giving visa to the Gujarat chief minister.
The second indication that the two leaders have patched up is their sharing the dais at a function in Adalaj on Sarkhej-Gandhinagar highway on Monday. Sources in political circles said that it was the RSS which had brokered a truce between the two leaders during the national executive meeting at Nagpur last week. RSS leaders had advised both the BJP leaders to work together to strengthen the party as an organization, the sources said.
However, there is another view of the recent developments. Some see them as tactical moves by the two leaders. They may have appeared together in public because of RSS pressure but Modi is still maintaining a distance from Advani while the elder leader does not want to take the matter further, skeptics said.
These observers say that while Advani had praised Modi on his blog a day before his scheduled visit to Ahmedabad, Modi has not issued any statement in praise of his mentor.
Advani flew down to Ahmedabad on Monday evening and went to Adalaj where the campus of Shantiniketan Senior Living Complex was inaugurated by Modi. Both the leaders shared the dais at the function and sat beside each other. Late in the evening, Modi and Advani also attended the meeting of the Somnath trust at Gandhinagar. Advani's presence at the meeting was significant as he did not attend the previous meeting of the trust in September last year. Earlier, Advani had said in his blog post that Modi was the third Indian to feature on the cover of 'Time' magazine after Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel. He had also criticised the US for refusing the Gujarat chief minister a visa.
"The irony is that while the US government has refused a visa to Modi, a report prepared by a think tank of the US Congress has in a 100 page report assigned very high marks to Modi for his governance," Advani wrote.
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