Deliberations of the five-member committee, which was set up to go into the party's poor performance during the recent assembly elections, has generated so much heat that Advani had to intervene through his emissary and ask Govindacharya to ensure that the committee's activities remained low profile.
Advani's intervention was necessitated because of some leaders' perception that the committee's findings may become a vindictive exercise by the central leadership to ease out some important leaders from the state in general and former president Murli Manohar Joshi in particular.
They feel the committee's report might cause embarrassment to Joshi, who is currently a Lok Sabha member from Allahabad, and weaken his case for being a candidate for party presidentship when it falls vacant in 1997, he said. Advani's second term as party president expires in 1997, after which a new president will have to be elected.
The party leader alleged that the committee was not functioning as a cohesive unit and this might make its report biased. He pointed out that out of the five members, only two were active: Govindacharya and his known supporter, Narendra Modi. The other members