Lok Sabha polls: PM Modi, Shah banking on a handful of leaders with skills

Who are these men and how are they important in the changing political landscape?

Political management is an artful enterprise for a party in power and more for one that administers through a coalition. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) discovered the ordeals of handling incongruent allies in the early years of the first National Democratic Alliance (NDA) dispensation, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his second-in-command, L K Advani. 

Notwithstanding their long experience, Vajpayee and Advani were ingénues in a thicket peopled by divas (J Jayalalithaa) and icons (Balasaheb Thackeray). When Jayalalithaa, who proffered her support to Vajpayee after much persuasion, demanded that Samata Party leader George Fernandes should be dumped as the defence