Gadkari refused to make Munde state in-charge, but BJP top brass decided to keep him in Maharashtra core committee.
Even as BJP bigwigs toiled through Saturday and Sunday to try and resolve the crisis in the Maharashtra unit, party president Nitin Gadkari and long-time rival Gopinath Munde steadfastly refused to sit across the table and thrash out their differences till party patriarch LK Advani summoned them to his house.
A team of three senior politicians — former party chief M Venkaiah Naidu, general secretary CN Ananth Kumar, and Ram Lal — spent most of the day running back and forth between the two antagonists whose bitter rivalry has led the BJP to the brink of a split in their home state.
Gadkari and Munde played the part of sworn enemies, resolutely refusing to come face to face till Advani’s stern summons came in and they met at his house late on Sunday night.
But Advani’s intervention also exposed deeper cracks within the party in the state. Earlier in the day, Gadkari made it clear to Naidu, Kumar and Lal that he would not give in to “pressure politics of Munde”. Gadkari was worried that his stature at the national level might be undermined if he were to be seen buckling under Munde.
“It was a tactical decision to bring Gadkari only in the final stage of discussions where a formula would be acceptable to Munde,” a senior BJP general secretary said.
Earlier in the day, the BJP headquarter in the capital was abuzz with discussions between several leaders of both camps. After a failed attempt on Saturday to bring the two state heavyweights together, the top leadership wanted to sort things out by Sunday through a compromise formula.
Naidu took the initiative to start discussions with Gadkari’s aides where it was indicated that Munde wanted the top brass to give him charge of the party’s state affairs. But Gadkari made it clear that Munde would not be made the state president or prabhari.
At the end, it was decided that Munde will be kept in the state core committee and consulted on all decisions in the state. The top leadership has decided to put on hold the appointment of Gadkari’s man, Vinod Tawde, as the state council chief by replacing Munde’s man Pandurang Phundkar.
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