BJP president Lal Krishna Advani has claimed his party would gain greatly if his ongoing swarna jayanti rath yatra was forcibly stopped in Bihar by Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, like the Somnath-Ayodhya rath yatra in October, 1990.
This is what we want as it will help us, but I don't think anybody would be so foolish to stop the yatra, he told PTI in an interview aboard his chariot on wheels, as it rumbled and rattled through Marathwada recently.
Advani reminisced that Yadav had requested him to call off the Ram rath yatra, saying, Yadav called me his elder brother and claimed he was personally making the request as I was held in great regard by the then Prime Minister V P Singh.
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Recalling the incident, Advani said, I said no, and What happened at Samastipur on October 23, 1990, is history.
Occasionally putting his feet up on a chair to nurse a standing oedema, an ailment common to police and military sentries who have to remain upright for prolonged periods, Advani reiterated he was not at all anxious about his current rath yatra being obstructed in Bihar.
On the statement by the Bihar Chief Minister that he had been deliberately implicated in the fodder scam just as the BJP president was charged in the hawala case but subsequently acquitted, Advani retorted: Then let him follow the course of action I took (resignation).