L K ADVANI After his heydays as the architect of the BJP’s Ram Temple movement in Ayodhya, L K Advani found his wings considerably clipped in the last two years, although he continues to hold emotive and moral appeal within the party. In the run-up to the 2014 polls, Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial candidature was considered incomplete for months, till Advani publicly ratified it. The new BJP leadership has treated him with indifference, if not disdain. Advani was removed from the BJP’s parliamentary board last year, and included in the Margdarshak Mandal along with veterans Murli Manohar Joshi and A B Vajpayee. Still, Advani offers hope to party leaders who find themselves belittled. [related-post] “At the present point of time, the forces that can crush democracy, notwithstanding the constitutional and legal safeguards, are stronger. I don’t think anything has been done that gives me the assurance that civil liberties will not be suspended or destroyed again. I don’t have the confidence that it (Emergency) cannot happen again,” he said in an interview to The Indian Express in June. His statement was apparently directed at his party’s leadership. The present “revolt” could not have been possible without his leadership. Shanta Kumar Former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister and senior minister in the A B Vajpayee government Shanta Kumar was the first major leader to speak out against the party leadership after the Bihar poll defeat. Hours after the results, he said the party had made a serious mistake by not doing an “honest and serious self-introspection” after the rout in the Delhi assembly elections. Kumar emphasised that the party “should have talked to seniors”. Earlier, when the BJP defended the MP government after the Vyapam scam, Kumar had written a letter to Amit Shah stating that the scam had dented the image of the NDA government and “made all of us bow our heads in shame”. He had even sought the setting up of an ethics committee to act as a “Lokpal” to “keep a check on leaders in the government”. He also expressed displeasure over recent incidents of communal clashes and controversial statements made by certain BJP leaders. “Some leaders who spoke about Hindu religion, faith and worship do not understand the basic ethos of Hinduism,” he had said. The 81-year-old is still an authority in his home state that gave all its four Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in 2014. Murli Manohar Joshi HE WAS one of the prominent faces of the BJP when the Babri Masjid was demolished. His fiery speeches are still remembered across Uttar Pradesh. He held the key HRD portfolio in the A B Vajpayee government. He got the short shrift under the present leadership, which forced him to vacate his constituency, Varanasi, and contest from Kanpur. He was later included in the party’s Margdarshak Mandal. At present, he has little moral authority or political clout in the party, not even in his home state where he was once a towering figure. While today’s statement will create strong ripples in the party, his individual outburst may not have made much impact. Joshi gains leverage by virtue of being one of the “four veterans”. Yashwant Sinha The civil servant-turned politician served as finance minister and foreign minister in the A B Vajpayee government. He was also the finance minister in the short-lived Chandrashekhar government in 1991. One of the seniors sidelined by the current party leadership, Sinha opted out of the electoral fray in the last Lok Sabha elections. His son, Jayant Sinha, contested on the BJP ticket from his constituency, Hazaribagh, and is MoS (Finance) in the Narendra Modi government. This has not stopped the senior Sinha from criticising the economic and foreign policy of the Modi government. While he was earlier among those who supported Modi’s prime ministerial candidature, he targeted the new leadership after veterans like him were kept out of the party’s and government’s decision-making process. He said the government had declared people over the age of 75 to be “brain dead”. He is 78 years old. Compiled by Ashutosh Bhardwaj & Amitabh Sinha
