Over 40-day yatra, Advani establishes himself as BJP's tallest leader

New Delhi: As Lal Krishna Advani winds up his 38-day nationwide anti graft yatra in Delhi today, the BJP veteran has reasons to look back upon the journey with a degree of smug satisfaction.

Most analysts, political pundits and even his party leaders had written off Advani’s Yatra as a self serving waste of time. Some even viewed the exercise as a spoilsport that would take attention away from the team Anna led movement against corruption. Remember the yatra was announced at a time when team Anna was on a high having just extracted a commitment from the parliament on the Jan Lokpal bill. The credibility of the political class was at a low and team Anna was widely regarded as a more credible and popular vehicle to capture public anger and angst than any political grouping or leader.

The general consensus amongst observers was that the exercise was a desperate attempt by Advani to resurrect himself by riding on the corruption bandwagon.

Not many, including yours truly, thought Advani would be able to reinvent and repackage himself and position himself as a contender for the top job on behalf of the BJP and the NDA. Dismissive and contemptuous of the effort, even those charitably disposed towards the effort erred on the side of ridicule while assessing the Yatra and its likely impact on both the leader and his party, the BJP.

The skeptics almost started sounding prophetic as one bad omen after another followed Advani’s decision to undertake the journey.

The first to stand up against the Yatra and Advani’s effort to reinvent himself was the BJP veteran’s former protégé and Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi. The Gujarat strongman launched his own Sadbhavna mission to not just steal Advani’s thunder but also position himself as the BJP candidate for Prime Minister. Then came reports about the annoyance and anger of the RSS which summoned the BJP veteran to Nagpur and made him suggest that he was not a candidate for the post of PM. Only after a half hearted and rather tentative suggestion to this effect did the RSS agree to throw its weight behind the anti graft campaign. More logistical difficulties and embarrassments followed. One day the tyre of his vehicle got stuck, on another there was malfunctioning of the hydraulic lift in the Rath! On several venues the absence of crowds was too stark to miss.

But the old warhorse toiled on. Tirelessly and stoically. First making a point to all those who may have thought that at his age he may find it difficult to complete the nearly 40-day journey. The 84-year old Advani proved himself to be fitter than most of his younger colleagues in their fifties and early sixties.

External factors also helped him.

Outside the BJP, team Anna lost quite a bit of its luster because of a number of factors ranging from their decision to oppose the congress in Hissar to charges against Kiran Bedi, internal dissensions and the resignation of some core committee members. His detractors within the BJP like Narendra Modi also got isolated and preoccupied with their own problems and remained largely bogged down in their own states. The BJP president, Nitin Gadkari, who was not too enthusiastic about Advani’s Yatra to begin with also decided in favor of discretion and caution during the second half of Advani’s campaign realizing that the Yatra was gradually becoming a rallying point for all those who were nervous about their own future prospects and were not too comfortable with the rise of either Gadkari or Modi in the BJP.

Modi continued to sulk but Gadkari fell in line –at least in public—to make sure that Advani does not become the automatic choice of this group of leaders by default.

But whether Gadkari and Modi like it or not, Advani has emerged the tallest leader in the party at the end of his 40-day journey. It’s difficult to see what benefit the party may have accrued at the end of the Yatra but the gains for Advani are there for everyone to see.

Nitish Kumar flagged off the campaign and the Yatra came to an end in Delhi with an impressive public meeting at the Ramlila Maidan which was attented by not just the BJP top brass but an array of NDA leaders, representing JD(U), Shiv Sena, Akali Dal and the AIADMK.

Advani also virtually set the agenda of the winter session of the parliament in his Ramlila Maidan speech saying corruption and the issue of black money stashed abroad will remain the main theme of the opposition attack in the forthcoming session.

In one stroke thus Advani established himself not just as the BJP’s top leader but also as an architect of opposition unity and strategy.

The next elections –if they are held on schedule in 2014—are still a while away and much may change between now and then. But for now Advani seems to have battled all odds and doubts to reclaim his position as the tallest leader in the BJP led national democratic alliance (NDA).