Mask’ to mascot: It’s Vajpayee everywhere, Advani steps back

NEW DELHI, Aug 15: Two elections, less than two years apart. And in between, the Bharatiya Janata Party has changed, and how.LK Advani wa...

NEW DELHI, Aug 15: Two elections, less than two years apart. And in between, the Bharatiya Janata Party has changed, and how.

LK Advani was everywhere last time, along with Atal Behari Vajpayee on the backdrop of press conferences, in brochures and posters, on wall paintings across the country. Today he is nowhere in the campaign.

Reports from the BJP’s Media Centre handling the campaign show a total eclipse of Advani. Vajpayee is the lone face to figure in 700 newspapers and periodicals and 20-odd television channels selected for the advertising campaign for the next 45 days. Of the 70 posters prepared, there is one containing BJP chief Kushabhau Thakre and two of Advani. The remaining have only Atal Behari Vajpayee.

If there are any doubts left, a visit to the BJP’s newly built conference hall at 11 Ashok Road would erase them. Except for a small portrait of the RSS founder Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, the hall is full of Vajpayee’s blown-up photographs. And no one else.

And compare and contrast thiswith the Congress. Even the Congress Party’s conference hall at 24 Akbar Road does not have a Sonia portrait. A party which thrived on personalties — Nehru, Indira, Rajiv — does not have its most projected face of the campaign as backdrop for conferences.

In the BJP, the Vajpayee story has only begun. It will unfold in the days to come. Video films, 150 publicity vans to tour 107 sensitive constituencies (where the margin of votes between the BJP and its rivals is around 10 per cent) and audio tapes have nothing to say about anybody else.

The go-ahead to the poll blitzkrieg projecting Vajpayee was given by Advani himself. And it was Advani who announced Atal as party’s Prime Ministerial candidate in 1996 without clearance from the RSS.

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In the last two years, Vajpayee has removed any doubt about his status in the party. From a mask’, he has become the mascot. Gone are the days when Advani clinched alliances, decided poll strategies. It is now Vajpayee who calls the shots and sets the agenda. Heclinched the Janata Dal and TDP deals and virtually forced the party to accept it. The Vajpayee-centred campaign would also put an end to doubts about the BJP’s problems in shedding its hardline RSS moorings. In 1998, Vajpayee rubbished the suggestions of the RSS being the puppeteer. In just less than two years, he has proved it.