Gandhinagar: The million rupee question in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is, what fate awaits LK Advani, the one- time mentor of Prime Minister Narendra Modi?
A question mark hangs over the parliamentary future of this seven times Lok Sabha member, six of them from Gandhinagar in Gujarat. A more or less similar outcome awaits party veteran Murli Manohar Joshi in his home ground of UP. Advani along with Atal Behari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi constituted the three founding pillars of the BJP.
Vajpayee’s relevance stood reduced after the party’s defeat in the 2004 hustings and his health issues subsequently turned him into a ceremonial relic until he passed away last year (August 16,2018). The mirthful irony of evolving politics is that while Modi owes his rise to chief ministership of Gujarat solely to Advani, the latter was the first person he sidelined on his way to prime ministership.
In fact, Modi had been banished from Gujarat in the aftermath of Shankersinh Vaghela’s rebellion in 1995 that led to the fall of first BJP govt in Gujarat headed by Keshubhai Patel.
Vaghela had flown to Khajuraho with 48 party legislators. A compromise was worked out by Vajpayee to save the govt. According to the truce formula, Keshubhai was replaced by Suresh Mehta and state party organisation secretary Modi was sent packing out of Gujarat.
However, the Mehta govt could barely survive 11 months as behind the scene machinations by Modi and VHP leader Pravin Togadia triggered a chain of events that led to its fall and a stint of President’s rule later brought Vaghela to power at the head of a regional party, RJP with Congress support.
The RJP govt lasted about 500 days and opted for elections in which Keshubhai returned to power in 1998 heading a BJP govt. He was replaced by Modi in the aftermath of the earthquake, as chief minister in 2002 with Advani playing a pivotal role.
Modi’s three-day “sadbhavana” fast on Sept 17-19, 2011, wherein he first unsheathed his national political preferences, came just a month before Advani’s “Jan Chetna” yatra. It was then seen as an attempt by Modi to upstage his mentor in the run up to Prime Ministerial sweepstakes.
Factspeak is that in June 2013 Modi took over as head of BJP campaign committee for the 2014 LS polls and two months later was declared the party candidate for prime ministership . The rest is history. Soon after Modi took charge as Prime Minister in 2014, both Advani and Joshi were dressed into a ”margdarshak mandal”, a sort of apex advisory body with nowhere to go!
