Even after becoming one of the most powerful members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Sanjay Joshi, former general secretary (organisation), kept losing his jobs. He has also been constantly under attack from senior leaders for years. Why?
Two political mistakes he made — his opposition to Narendra Modi’s re-entry into Gujarat politics in 1998 and his stand against L K Advani in the wake of the senior party leader’s praises for Muhammed Ali Jinnah in 2005— seem to have irked many power centres within the party.
In 1998, he sided with then Gujarat chief minister and BJP leader, Keshubhai Patel, to oppose Narendra Modi’s plan to return to Gujarat from Delhi to work in the state unit of the party. Joshi was then the general secretary (organisation) of BJP in Gujarat.
Interestingly, before the fight began, Modi and Joshi were on good terms and had worked together for several years in Gujarat. When Joshi was shifted to Gujarat from Maharashtra in 1988-89 by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and made secretary (organisation) in the state unit of BJP, Modi was the general secretary (organisation) of the Gujarat BJP. But in 1995, due to infighting with senior leader Shankarsinh Vaghela, Modi was removed from the top post and Joshi was asked to replace him. When Modi wanted to return to the state after the Gujarat assembly election in 1998 in which BJP won 121 of the 189 seats, Joshi strongly opposed the move.
However, times changed for Modi and he replaced Keshubhai Patel as the chief minister in 2001. Since all the senior leaders of BJP and RSS were aware of the growing tussle between Joshi and Modi, they kept the former away from Gujarat by making him the national general secretary of the party.
This distance, however, didn’t end the animosity between the two leaders. In 2005, just before the 25th anniversary celebration of BJP was to begin in Mumbai, a CD surfaced which put Joshi in poor light. Soon after, Joshi had to resign from the post and he could not return to the party till 2011 when BJP President Nitin Gadkari brought him back to handle the Uttar Pradesh assembly election.
The second political mistake he made was in 2005 when he had the audacity to walk up to senior party leader L K Advani and asked him to resign from the post of BJP President after his controversial speech in Pakistan in which he praised Jinnah.
“When L K Advani returned, all the senior leaders, including Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar met him at the airport and tried to convince him to resign. But Sanjay Joshi didn’t go to meet him. And when he did meet L K Advani, he had asked him to resign because RSS wanted so. This had annoyed all the leaders of BJP,” said a senior party leader. Senior leaders explained that because these two mistakes, it took Gadkari almost two years to convince the senior party leaders to allow Joshi to return to BJP. However, because of the continuous pressure from Modi, Joshi again had to resign from the BJP’s national executive last month.
