By TCN Special Correspondent,
Ahmedabad: A cold war seems to have started between senior party leader L K Advani and Chief Minister Narendra Modi, with the latter recently declaring his intentions as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in 2014.
Modi throwing his hat into the ring for prime ministerial candidate was interpreted as a challenge to the leadership of Advani who always considered himself as the future prime minister of BJP after Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
It is very much clear from the fact that Advani, who used to visit Somnath here every year for the last 20 years on September 25, has cancelled the visit tomorrow. He is also not coming to the state level BJP’s mega rally being held tomorrow (September 25) to expose the corruption issues raised by the Opposition Congress against Modi government and state governor Kamla Beniwal’s alleged anti-government approach.
In fact, none of the central BJP leaders are coming to Modi’s first public programme after his “sadbhavana fast’’.
None of the publicity materials like, posters, stickers, leaflets and banners have the photos of Advani. Earlier, whether Advani came to the BJP function or not, his photographs were carried with Modi on all publicity materials.
In fact, Advani wanted to kick off his anti-corruption rathyatra from Karamsad, the birth place of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, in Gujarat. But Modi reportedly suggested Advani to shift the venue to Sitabdiyara, the birth place of Jayprakash Narayan in Bihar. But immediately after that Modi held his ‘sadbhavna mission’ fast in Gujarat, inviting all national BJP and NDA leaders making public his intentions about his future course of action.
Senior national BJP leaders are reported to not have liked this behaviour of Modi. And this reportedly did not go down well with Advani as well who also attended Modi’s fast. In Gujarat, Advani is known as Modi’s political mentor.
BJP sources say that Modi had prevailed upon the RSS leaders to ensure that he (Modi) flagged off the rath yatra in Bihar.
But Advani and national BJP leaders having not liked Modi flaunting political influence appeared to have spoiled Modi’s gameplan to land in Bihar and flag off the yatra. They have now invited Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, an NDA ally and a Modi bete noir, to flag off the yatra. Nitish, party sources here say, has been assured that Modi will not be there at the flagging off ceremony. In the last assembly elections as well, Nitish had prevented Modi from coming to Bihar as he had expressed fears that Modi’s visit would antagonize Muslims and harm the prospect of his candidates.
So, Modi would again not be able to visit Bihar.
A question arises that how a BJP chief minister not being allowed even to set his foot in Bihar by his own party leaders, could aspire to become prime minister?