L K Advani and RSS chief meet,no let up in tension

“It was opined that several issues need further discussion and exchange of notes at various levels. Same will take place at appropriate time. Shri Bhagwatji also suggested that such useful exchange of views should continue in future also,” RSS propaganda chief Manmohan Vaidya said in a press statement issued after the Bhagwat-Advani meeting.

The statement was unusual because the RSS has always maintained that it keeps exchanging notes with leaders of the BJP,but rarely has it issued a press statement after a meeting. Significantly,Thursday’s statement stressed that Bhagwat and Advani had discussed the role of movements led by the RSS and BJP,and that the BJP patriarch had “conveyed” his “detailed and candid” views to the RSS chief.

“In a detailed and candid interaction Shri Advaniji conveyed his views on various developments in the country and the role of the party and the broad nationalist movement led by the Sangh,” Vaidya’s statement said.

Advani’s loyalists within the BJP claimed that the statement was a first step in a “process”

which would “culminate into something concrete” well before Lok Sabha elections.

The rival camp argued that the unusual statement by the RSS was Advani’s last ditch attempt to “show that he is in touch with the RSS” and to reclaim “some authority” in the party.

“The assurance on exchanging notes in future is no assurance at all,because that would happen in any case. The issuance of a statement is merely to assuage the hurt felt by the patriarch.

Advani can at best use it to show that he is in touch with the RSS to claim some authority in the eyes of the public and party cadres,” an influential BJP functionary said about Thursday’s meeting.

The fact that Advani called on Bhagwat at the Sangh’s local Keshav Kunj headquarters was also interpreted as an indication of who sought out whom.

Former BJP president Venkaiah Naidu,who met Bhagwat,appeared dismissive of suggestions that the RSS was going to address Advani’s grievances. “Party (BJP) was capable of addressing its problems,” Naidu said.

At a press conference he addressed at the BJP headquarters hours after meeting Modi,Naidu said,“People want a decisive,dynamic and development-oriented leader and party. That is why they are looking towards the BJP and talking about Narendra Modi.”

The Congress,Naidu said,was trying to conceal the government’s “lacklusture performance” under the cloak of secularism. “Whenever Congress is faced with trouble,imminent defeat,people’s anger,failure on developmental front and engulfed in corruption,they always try to divert attention of the people from real issues and bring their old raga of secularism versus communalism,” Naidu said. He dared the Congress to “join the debate on development” for which,he said,Gujarat and other BJP-ruled states had offered a model.

Naidu also took a dig at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar,saying that the fact that the Congress had backed him in the Bihar trust vote had let the “cat out of the bag”,and there was “something more than what meets the eye”.