Advani

New Delhi, Oct. 24: Lal Krishna Advani appears to have stolen a march over his rivals in the race to replace Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the BJP’s supreme leader.

Even as the debate rages in the party and the media, Advani seems to have snatched the initiative to bolster his case. On every single issue over the past few months — from the presidential polls to price of paddy — the former BJP chief has succeeded in becoming the face of the party.

The alacrity with which Advani has issued statements on every topic — including the presidential election when he hijacked the party’s agenda and mounted a scathing attack on the UPA nominee with the help of loyalists — bears testimony to this.

Advani took the initiative to write to the Prime Minister on investigations in the serial blasts in Mumbai. He issued statements on Manmohan Singh’s “sleepless nights” remark in the context of persecution of minorities, the Ram setu controversy, farmers’ plight and the government’s flip-flop on the nuclear deal.

He even spoke to Benazir Bhutto in the wake of the blasts that followed her return from exile and issued a statement on the efforts to establish democracy in Pakistan.

Paddy price was one issue on which the BJP had been constantly hammering the government. Advani did not leave it to the others. He shot off a statement on the discrimination against paddy growers.

His greetings on Id surprised BJP watchers who thought the party did not care for such formalities. Politically, too, it was Advani who sorted out the problem with the Shiv Sena and approached ADMK chief Jayalalithaa for talks.

In his non-stop political safari, he even met with a major accident when he came across as trying to tone down the party’s opposition to the nuclear deal, but that did not dampen his spirit.

Though a section of party leaders, egged on by the RSS, compelled Advani to issue a clarification, he took it in his stride and moved on to grab centre stage on the Ram setu controversy.

Even when the Prime Minister indicated a change of stand on the nuclear deal, it was Advani who attacked him before BJP chief Rajnath Singh could step in.

Advani’s supremacy was on display at the Bhopal national executive, too. There were attempts to curb the enthusiasm of his supporters through Vajpayee’s letter which seemed to suggest a comeback, but Advani emerged as the focal point and delivered the valedictory speech.

The habitual dissenters, be it Murli Manohar Joshi or Yashwant Sinha, were nowhere near when Advani was positioning himself as Vajpayee’s successor.

Although there are murmurs of discontent in the Rajnath camp as Advani tries to snatch the initiative to project himself as the party’s face, the dominant view among senior leaders is that nobody else is in a position to play that role.

Most leaders believe Advani has both the stature and the ability to do what he is doing and the party president should have no grudges against him.

It appears that Advani, whose praise of Pakistan’s founder M.A. Jinnah cost him the BJP chief’s chair, has finally outlived that stigma.