Narendra Modi fallout: Bihar chief calls Advani 'dead politician'

As the buzz around Narendra Modi’s impending christening as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate grows louder, the rifts within the party are becoming increasingly evident. Though the RSS has made more than clear its inclination to make the announcement urgently, party patriarch LK Advani has refused to budge. His coterie of followers too has remained unwilling to openly support the Gujarat CM. There is little doubt that Advani has placed himself between Modi and his PM ambitions, but not much is known about the exact fault lines within the party. In public, BJP president Rajnath Singh has batted away questions regarding Modi and has even gone to the extent of saying that the PM candidate would be announced shortly before the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. [caption id=“attachment_1103079” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  SushilKumar Mosi’s Twitter page.[/caption] Even after Advani stepped down from the BJP’s working committee making no effort to hide his displeasure at Modi’s elevation as the campaign chief, all that senior leaders including Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj could do was hail Advani’s position and his importance to the party, in public at least. However, the threshold of patience has possibly been breached now with the first-ever public questions being raised by party members about the senior BJP leader’s personal ambitions. The first spillover has come from Bihar BJP chief, Sushil Kumar Modi, has lashed out at the senior leader by questioning if his personal ambitions have driven him against Narendra Modi. He hit out at Advani on Twitter by saying: “Politics is the only profession in which people aspire till their last. Ministerial berth can resurrect a dead politician?” While Sushilkumar Modi might not have a great amount of clout in BJP’s national executive, his outpouring is representative of the sentiments of a section of the party surely. The fact that he even chose to make his feelings public against one of the tallest leaders in the party points towards BJP’s growing impatience with Advani and the latter’s growing irrelevance in the new scheme of things. In fact, the audacity with which Modi calls Advani a ‘dead politician’ in a public domain hints at how the BJP is probably ready to leave Advani out in the cold and move on with their plans hinged on Narendra Modi. Sushil Modi goes on to admonish Advani and say that the senior leader should have himself come forward and anointed Narendra Modi.With the polls just round the corner, this might be trouble that the BJP did not need. However, if they indeed have to bolster their prospects at the upcoming polls they have to do the necessary nips and tucks within their party.