Big Brother turns the heat on Advani

With the RSS top brass clearly conveying their ‘‘serious concern’’ over ‘‘ideological deviations’’ t...

With the RSS top brass clearly conveying their ‘‘serious concern’’ over ‘‘ideological deviations’’ to the BJP leadership today, the growing buzz in Parivar circles by late this evening was that things were getting hotter for BJP president L K Advani.

Following up on their public reprimand on Saturday against ‘‘ideological erosion, behavioural misdemeanour and violation of organisational discipline,’’ RSS general secretary Mohan Bhagwat and joint general secretaries Suresh Soni and Madan Dass Devi met both Atal Behari Vajpayee and Advani today to personally convey the RSS’s ‘‘reservations’’ on the line being pursued by the BJP leadership.

That the strained RSS-BJP ties had reached a decisive phase was clear from the fact that Mohan Bhagwat—technically Number 2 but held in much greater esteem than RSS supremo K S Sudarshan—had himself decided to speak to Vajpayee and Advani.

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When Sudarshan, in an interview to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk the Talk programme in April, had asked Advani to make way for a younger leadership, it was Bhagwat who had issued a statement in favour of the BJP chief.

The choice of Bhagwat as today’s chief interlocutor was, therefore, aimed to convey the message that the RSS was serious about effecting a ‘‘course correction’’ (accompanied by a regime change if necessary) in the BJP.

Neither RSS nor BJP leaders were willing to elaborate on the meetings but well-placed sources in both organisations said the Sangh had made its ‘‘disenchantment’’ with Advani amply clear and some of them even expected the BJP chief to step down .

The sense of looming crisis was apparent with BJP leaders—among them Jaswant Singh, Venkaiah Naidu and Murli Manohar Joshi—rushing to the RSS headquarters in Jhandewalan for closed-door meetings in the evening.

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All BJP office-bearers, a senior leader revealed, were on ‘‘high alert’’ and had been directed to remain in the capital for the next two days to deal with the fallout of the latest twist in the long-running drama engulfing the party.

Several office-bearers trooped to the RSS headquarters for a late-night meeting and another meeting is scheduled to be held at the BJP central office tomorrow to take a final decision on how to deal with the RSS directive.Advani, sources close to him said, was in no mood to give in to the mounting pressure to step down and did not express any regrets on his alleged ‘‘deviations’’ to his RSS interlocutors. The Advani camp blamed rivals in the party for ‘‘spreading baseless rumours,’’ and maintained that the BJP chief would continue at the helm at least till the Bihar elections.

However, in the absence of vocal backing from his erstwhile loyalists (who remained huddled in meetings and refused to make any categorical statement on Advani’s continuance) Advani may not be able to hold out for long, BJP insiders said.

Advani’s situation, they felt, was much worse today than a month ago when he took back his resignation following the compromise formula worked out by his loyalists. Advani, who had resigned on June 6 in the wake of trenchant criticism from the Sangh Parivar over his remarks on Jinnah, Akhand Bharat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid during his Pakistan visit, withdrew it on June 10.

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But though Advani was party to the BJP compromise resolution slamming Jinnah for his two-nation theory, his refusal to personally retract the statements he had made in Pakistan irked large sections of the RSS and VHP.

The publication of various articles and letters by Advani’s former aide Sudheendra Kulkarni only added to the growing anti-Advani mood within the Parivar. Although Kulkarni eventually resigned, the fact that Advani had not asked him to quit after his June 24 letter (in which he attacked the RSS for ‘‘micro-managing’’ BJP affairs) was also considered a sign of Advani’s ‘‘tacit support’’ for the Kulkarni thesis.