| An RSS delegation had lunch with LK Advani but by the evening, the demand that one man hold only one post was being mouthed by several BJP leaders, suggesting the Sangh had had its way in creating conditions for replacing LK Advani as president of the party. |
| For the moment, however, the Sangh had to rest content with asking the BJP president to do some ideological "course correction". |
| Top RSS leaders led by general secretary Mohan Bhagwat met former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the latter's residence. Bhagwat, accompanied by RSS joint general secretaries Madan Das Devi and Suresh Soni, spent about an hour with Vajpayee and are understood to have conveyed the Sangh's strong reservations about "ideological erosion, behavioural misdemeanor and organisational indiscipline by some of the like-minded organisations". |
| On the face of it, this was meant to be an evenhanded rebuke of both Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia for his intemperate remarks about LK Advani's stewardship of the BJP and Advani's own controversial remarks pertaining to Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, 'akhand Bharat' and Ayodhya demolition. But in fact, the target of the Sangh ire was Advani. |
| In apparently a closely guarded secret, VHP leaders met the Sangh brass on Saturday and Sunday. |
| Before the RSS meeting, Advani held parleys with senior party leaders including Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kumar. Armed with the intelligence that if asked to quit, Advani would put the matter to a referendum within the party that would only result in lowering the prestige of the RSS, the Sangh decided to have wide-ranging consultations with BJP leaders on the one-man, one post issue. |
| Accordingly, Jaswant Singh, Venkiah Naidu and Sushma Swaraj met the Sangh leaders and meetings are expected to be held late into the night. Yesterday, Chhattisgarh MP Baliram Kashyap joined former Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha in demanding that Advani give up one of the two posts he was holding""party president and leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. This was the principal issue in the meetings the Sangh held today. |
| That the crisis had deepened was suggested by the fact that the BJP held firm that the demand of one man one post was irrelevant. |
| Party spokesman Prakash Javadekar, clearly on instruction from the party president, ticked off Kashyap for his statement. Logically, this means action must be taken against former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha as well. |
| The BJP has been arguing that in order to expand its hold, it needs to become more inclusive, otherwise it could face the danger of dwindling into nothingness like the Jai Gurudev Party or the Hindu Mahasabha before. |
| BJP ideologues have argued that for its political survival it needs to be flexible and have ruled out creating an atmosphere to gradually turn India into a Hindu State. Advani has repeated this not once but several times. |
| However, still smarting at having lost power in 2004 elections and attributing it to the BJP's compromise with core ideological issues like Hindutva, the VHP wants the Sangh to consider it the purer alternative to the BJP. |
| By coming down on Advani, the RSS indicating that the balance of sympathy was with the VHP and other allies. Now, it is appearing to renew its grip on the whip hand. What the BJP is and where it should go is likely to be discussed at the party's national executive in Chennai later this month. |
| As party president, Advani has time till then to decide how to tackle the problem of dealing with those in the party who have asked that the one man one post norm apply to him as well. In December, the BJP holds celebrations in Mumbai to observe 25 years of its formation. |
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