PM Modi plays mean girl: Denies L K Advani ICCR head

After shunting him from the highest decision bodies of the party — BJP parliamentary board and central election committee — and then stripping him of the post of NDA chairman, the party seems likely to deny LK Advani the post of president of Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR).

ICCR is the nodal cultural body that aims to increase Indian cultural impact across countries.

The Telegraph reported :

“Both Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi are pitching for a sinecure but Narendra Modi is not keen on either and has “turned down” overtures made by a Joshi pleader, the sources said. They added that the Prime Minister’s own choice was a “younger” person who combined “some political experience” with a background and working knowledge of culture.”

One of the top contenders for the post, despite her claiming otherwise, is BJP’s Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher.

Leaders from Advani camp insisted on how the party patriarch —  who has been reduced to a ‘Mookdarshak ' (silent observer) now — should be considered for the post as he was still in the pink of his health “ready” to take on “responsibility” and how he deserved a post in keeping with his “age and stature”.

However, given his relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the snub isn’t entirely surprising.

Advani — one of the founding fathers of the party — had famously skipped the Goa national executive last year when Modi was declared chief of the party’s central election committee. More drama unfolded in the next few months, when Advani  and a small faction in the BJP opposed to the party plan of entrusting the general election campaign to Narendra Modi and declaring him the PM candidate. They were over-ruled and Advani quit from all party posts but was again coaxed not to take such a decision.

Advani even raised a furore over contesting from Gandhinagar and sought to stand from the Bhopal seat. Coaxed into contesting from the Gujarat, Advani won the seat.

However, since the election results, Advani has had to reckon with the consequences of the new power equations in the party.  Not only Advani was not sitting in the Lok Sabha seat traditionally occupied by the prime minister’s immediate deputy or the No 2 in the government pecking order, but he also appeared to have been shown the door as NDA chairman.

Sources close to Advani had in June said the BJP and members of his personal staff have decided to stop using room number 4 in Parliament, adding that the decision was solely his own.

Like we noted in an earlier post , through the tenure of the 15th Lok Sabha, Advani had spent Parliament recesses in a room bearing a plaque that says ‘Acting Chairman of the NDA’. On June 5, 2014 afternoon as Lok Sabha broke for lunch after MPs were sworn in, Advani reportedly found the plaque removed from his room.

The 86-year-old veteran spent lunch recess in the room occupied until now by Late Gopinath Munde as deputy leader of the BJP in Lok Sabha. Advani had been acting the chairman of NDA ever since Atal Bihari Vajpayee took ill. In 2009, when Sushma Swaraj was made leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha in place of Advani, he moved into the NDA chairman’s room. He was among a few who anchored the rise of the BJP in the 1990s and guided it through the tumultuous years in the opposition but did not have a role in the party’s first full-majority government.

Senior journalist Neerja Chowdhury last month while commenting on this issue had said that in whatever form it was, the seniormost leaders of the BJP were shown disrespect by the party itself.

“These people have given 50-60 years of their lives to the party. Not giving them two positions in the highest decision making body of the party is really sad. The party surely could have accommodated the two active ones. They have been removed at a time when they are physically and mentally fit. Their experience is so vast that many other leaders combined together won’t have that much experience. Advani is the person in fact who had paved the way for Vajpayee to become the prime minister,” Chowdhury said.

Since his ascension to the post of the PM, Modi had made it clear that those who were above a certain age would not be a part of his cabinet and when Amit Shah was chosen as the party president, it became clear that this new ‘brave’ BJP, under the new leadership, was looking ahead and for them senior party leaders could only play the role of mentors or advisers and no more.

Having mentored Modi in the art of politics and known him from close quarters, Advani had in all probability foreseen this. The ‘generational shift’ in BJP is now truly and finally complete. Needless to say the new BJP has the stamp of Prime Minister Narendra Modi all over it. And also needless to say that the treatment meted out to Advani will really come as a surprise to many.

It could be argued here that political leaders should hand over the reigns to the next generation with grace and bow out. However, ICCR is no top decision making body of the party and Modi could have been generous and let Advani take the post. If Modi goes ahead with Kirron Kher’s appointment he will making a very solid point about what has often been said about how he handles dissent.