Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani broke his silence today, three days after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee set the political pot boiling with his ‘‘march-to-victory-under-Advani’s-leadership’’ remark. As expected, he sought to play down the issue and charged the media with creating an issue where none existed.Advani told a group of journalists here this evening: ‘‘I have not commented (on the on-going controversy) so far because I have seen this kind of inclination in the media build up over the last five years. Having been a journalist myself, I can only state that this is an index of the rot that has set in to this profession. There is nothing new in what the media is writing. Our opponents have been trying for the last five years to weaken the Government by projecting that there are divisions between the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, between Vajpayee and Advani and between the BJP and its allies. We (Vajpayee and I) know each other so well that there has always been a perfect co-ordination between us.’’When asked why had he not spoken up till now, the Deputy Prime Minister said that he did not see anything new. ‘‘I sometimes feel like laughing looking at the way the media plays up things.’’Set to embark on a 12-day tour of the United States and Britain tomorrow morning, Advani apparently broke his silence to prevent the issue from dogging his visit.Advani had, in fact, made an attempt at damage-control by instructing Naidu immediately after the Prime Minister’s speech to affirm that Vajpayee remained the leader of the NDA and the BJP. He, a former journalist, apparently suspected that the media would play up the statement.As for the open-ended remarks of the Prime Minister, the explanation was that Vajpayee was only being true to his style, delivering a speech loaded with nuggets and laced with poetry.However, Naidu’s combined-leadership theme remained unexplained. The question still unanswered was whether Advani prompted Naidu, his handpicked party president, to make this declaration or the latter went overboard. The explanation from the quarters sympathetic to Naidu was that there was nothing new in what he had said. ‘‘After all, Advani has always led the party campaign,’’ they maintained.
