Advani engineered a coup to dump Gadkari?

23 January, 2013

The Bharatiya Janata Party's supremo and former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani, fearing loss of control over the major opposition party, has finally succeeded. By engineering a major coup, he gave a major shock to BJP's parent organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) by dumping its choice for party's presidential post.

Advani was unable to tolerate Nitin Gadkari’s attempts to ‘free’ the party from the clutches of his hand-picked self-styled party leaders, who formed a vested group and tried his best to strengthen party’s organisational set up at all levels, during last three years of his term as party president.

Impressed with his sincere efforts to bring back the BJP from the dust spread by Advani aides, RSS leadership had decided to give Gadkari another term as party president. The party’s by-laws prohibit any leader to take up presidential position for consecutive second term, but only to facilitate Gadkari, RSS forced the BJP to amend its rules.

Advani has expressed his open displeasure to amend party rules at party general council meeting in Mumbai, by keeping away from that session. Later suddenly corruption allegation came to light in the media against Gadkari’s own Spurthi Group of companies. Pressure was built-up for his resignation.

It was alleged that some senior leaders close to Advani were behind these exposures. However, noted auditor and RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy came to Gadkari’s aide by submitting an internal enquiry report into those allegations which gave him a clean chit. This had paved the way for Gadkari to continue as BJP chief for another term.

However, Advani reportedly failed to digest this and openly conveyed his opposition against Gadkari to the RSS leadership. With the intervention of the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagawat, Advani was forced to accept Gadkari as the party president.

However, just a day prior to filing nomination papers, Advani suddenly swung into action. With several dramatic developments, Gadkari was forced to step down. Though Advani failed to get his choice - M Venkaiah Naidu - as party chief, he accepted former party Chief Rajnath Singh as a ‘compromise’ candidate. Singh may not be from Advani’s coterie, but he has proved himself as unfit to act independently from Advani’s ‘mischief’ tactics.

It seems even finance ministry helped Advani to execute his ‘coup’ to force Gadkari out of the picture. His game plan started dramatically hours after income tax raids on firms linked to Gadkari.