Advani, Joshi axed from BJP's top bodies

Veterans, including Vajpayee, made members of newly created mentor group

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah, completed its generational shift on Tuesday by dropping BJP’s triumvirate — Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi — from the Parliamentary Board and Central Election Committee (CEC), the party’s highest decision-making bodies. Advani, Joshi and an ailing Vajpayee will now be part of a newly created five-member Margdarshak Mandal or mentor group, which has only an advisory role.

On the role of the Mandal, party spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain said, “They will show the way.” Hussain added Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh are part of the mentor group as well. However, the two are also part of the 12-member Parliamentary Board.

The Congress was quick to term the Mandal a toothless “old age home”. “Margdarshak Mandal is actually an old age home and mook darshak mandal (mute spectator group),” Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi said.

It is for the first time in the history of the BJP since it was founded in April 1980 that its Parliamentary Board would be without the BJP’s trimurti.

The three were not only BJP’s founding members but also the last of the party’s current leadership to have been born before Independence.

The Modi-led council of ministers has already reflected this generational change with no minister above 75 years old. Earlier this month, Shah had also dropped several aged leaders from his new team of party office bearers.

Both Joshi and Advani are currently Lok Sabha MPs and had resisted suggestions in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that they retire. Advani had sought the post of Speaker in the Lok Sabha, which was denied, and he had to face the ignominy of having his nameplate as working chairman of National Democratic Alliance the (NDA) removed from his room in Parliament. That was later restored.

The reconstituted Parliamentary Board and CEC also reflected power equations within the BJP. The party dropped Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Katiyar from its 15-member CEC, which approves candidates for elections.

Jagat Prakash Nadda and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan are new entrants in the Parliamentary Board. Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh, a three-time CM just as Chouhan, wasn’t included and neither were Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje, Goa’s Manohar Parrikar or Gujarat’s Anandiben Patel. During the Lok Sabha elections, both Joshi and Advani had praised the Madhya Pradesh model of development under Chouhan's leadership, instead of the Gujarat model under Modi.