A day after Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was appointed chief of the BJP’s central elections campaign committee after its two-day national executive in Goa, the party’s tallest leader and former deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, on Monday resigned from all party posts, plunging the principal opposition party in Parliament in gloom and its Gen Next leaders in total disarray. In his letter to BJP president, Advani said he is “finding it difficult to reconcile either with the current functioning of the party or the direction in which it is going”. The resignation letter was released to the media just a few minutes after BJP president Rajnath Singh had left his residence following a 40-minute long meeting.
Advani’s unhappiness with the party’s current leadership was evident by his decision to abstain from the Goa national executive and his references to a wounded Bhishma Pitamah lying on a bed of arrows in a scene in Mahabharata after Modi’s elevation. The suddenness and ferocity of his move, however, left the BJP leaders stunned. The immediate reaction of the shell-shocked leadership seemed to be to go into a state of bland denial. It maintained that the party does not accept his resignation and deputed senior leaders to persuade the BJP veteran to change his mind.
Irrespective of whether Advani is persuaded to withdraw his resignation or not, the message that he gave in his resignation can be ignored by the party only at its own peril. The BJP has ceased to be a party with ideals whose sole concern was the country and its people. By allowing individuals to overpower its ideological colour, it has lost its identity. Instead of coming up with an agenda for governance which protects and promotes the interests of the nation and its citizens, its leaders are more concerned with just pushing their personal agendas. This is a tragedy not only for the party but also for the Indian democracy. India needs a strong opposition led by a united leadership.