LK Advani's Wrath Yatra

A day after Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was anointed the BJP poll campaign chief, patriarch Lal Krishna Advani plunged the party into a crisis by resigning from his different responsibilities in the party.

The party, stunned into silence, had far from recovered from the shock till late in the evening and there was no solution in sight. Even after a procession of helpless leaders, irrespective of their factional affiliation, trooped into Advani’s Prithviraj Road residence, the stalwart remained adamant and refused to budge from the firm position he had taken.

In a strongly-worded letter addressed to party president Rajnath Singh, Advani wrote: “For some time, I have been finding it difficult to reconcile either with the current functioning of the party, or the direction in which it is going. Most leaders of ours are now concerned just with their personal agendas.”

It was an obvious criticism of the way his wishes were trampled upon at the party’s Goa national executive meet last weekend. Advani had insisted from the beginning that he was strongly opposed to Modi’s coronation and the Gujarat CM’s determined bid to take over the reins of the party. The Advani camp interpreted Modi’s ascendance as an attempt to send Advani into permanent retirement with little or no role in party affairs.

There were several attempts made to placate Advani and to reassure him that he enjoyed a position of pre-eminence in the party hierarchy. Several leaders, known to be close to the octogenarian, which included the likes of Sushma Swaraj, Ananth Kumar and even a fence-sitter like M Venkaiah Naidu parked themselves at his residence and urged him to withdraw his resignation letter.
Messages also kept pouring in from Singh’s residence where the beleaguered party chief held a closed-door meeting with party seniors, mostly members of the BJP parliamentary board. Modi could not make it to the board meeting at such a short notice.

Singh and his fellow BJP leaders rejected the resignation, but reports from Prithviraj Road indicated that the elderly leader was steadfast in his decision and was far from won over.

Modi made two calls during the day. Advani and his office did not accept the first call made in the morning before the resignation letter had been made public.
Modi tweeted in the evening that he had called Advani. His tweet read: “Had a detailed conversation with Advaniji on phone. Urged him to change his decision. I hope he will not disappoint lakhs of karyakartas.”

The elaborate process to sidestep Advani had been initiated much earlier. On Saturday, while Advani sulked and stayed away from Goa, complaining of a stomach ailment, two key RSS leaders Suresh Soni and Dattatreya Hosbale arrived at his house. They wanted the veteran to give his consent for Modi’s elevation. Advani flatly refused to do so. The battle lines were drawn with both sides issuing an ultimatum that they would go ahead with their respective decisions.

Modi’s Sunday tweet that he had Advani’s blessings was an exaggeration, as he had never spoken to the BJP patriarch. In fact, even Singh had not really consulted Advani on Modi’s promotion. He had, instead, roped in RSS’ support to bring Advani around. Soni and Hosabale visited Advani as Singh had not made much headway.

The Modi camp believes that the Advani era is over and this is the last stubborn stand that the veteran leader has taken. He will soon run out of support and even those owing allegiance to his faction will desert him. To them, this is a situation that Modi had foreseen and had to address at some point of time or the other.

But there are those in the Advani camp who know this is their last battle before the party surrenders to an ascendant Modi-mania. They are huddled together and eagerly watching in which direction the wind blows. Those who have been humiliated in the past are all the more anxious to find out how Advani wages his war.

Until late evening, no reconciliation formula had been found by the BJP leadership. Even concerned allies, especially the JD(U), watched the fast-moving developments from a distance.