NEW DELHI — After all exit polls giving a clear a majority to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to lead the next government, the BJP leadership is seeking to figure out what to do with party stalwarts L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. Both are decades senior to the party's PM candidate Narendra Modi and the leadership is not sure whether they will like to work in his Cabinet. Though Advani is likely to continue as chairman of the NDA, the position, with Modi occupying the PMO essentially on the strength of his mass appeal, will pale before the power the veteran had wielded as the No. 2 in the Atal Behari Vajpayee regime. Joshi, along with Vajpayee and Advani, was part of the troika which guided the party in the early 1990s. In fact, Modi had accompanied Joshi when the latter undertook his 47-day Bharat Ekta Yatra to hoist the Tricolour at Lal Chowk in Srinagar in defiance of prohibitory orders. The equations between them and Modi have since drastically changed, with the PM candidate emerging as the new saffron hero. Advani and Joshi had opposed Modi being designated the PM candidate, but were overruled. With no position commensurate to their standing available outside the government, the party leadership is struggling to get its arm around the issue. Sources indicated that the issue figured in separate conversations Nitin Gadkari had with the veteran duo on Tuesday. They said that Gadkari, who had a meeting with Modi in Ahmedabad on Monday, had tried to ascertain whether Advani and Joshi had anything specific in their minds on their role in the likely new dispensation.
Gadkari, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley visited Modi in Gandhinagar on Wednesday as part of the informal ministry-making exercise the party has started in the belief that it will take over the center's reins after Friday. While the issue of finding suitable slots for Advani and Joshi are supposed to be on the agenda of the Gandhinagar meeting, many in the party feel that the matter be left to the RSS leadership to handle.
