Bhagwat

New Delhi, Nov. 11: RSS chief Mohanrao Bhagwat today discussed the impending leadership changes in the BJP with party president Rajnath Singh.

The consultation process started a couple of weeks ago when the RSS boss had called on L.K. Advani, who is expected to step down as leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha shortly after Rajnath makes way for a new party president by January.

Sangh and BJP sources maintained that Bhagwat had “more or less” decided on Nitin Gadkari, the former Opposition leader in the Maharashtra legislative council, as the next party chief.

But sections of the party have reservations about handing over the reins to a relative non-entity from outside the Hindi heartland. According to a party MP from the state, Gadkari has “no proven political acumen or skills barring creating factions in Maharashtra”.

“His only plus, if you can call it that, is that he is from Nagpur (the RSS headquarters) and is supposed to have always had good relations with the Sangh,” a source said.

When the late Pramod Mahajan’s stranglehold on Maharashtra politics rankled with the RSS, it propped up Gadkari as a counterweight. After Mahajan’s death, the Sangh threw its weight behind Gadkari before he was turfed out by Mahajan’s brother-in-law Gopinath Munde.

Sources said Bhagwat’s statements after taking over the RSS indicated that his only “objective and agenda” were to “take over” the BJP. To achieve the goal, he needs a surrogate. “That seems to be Gadkari,” the source said.

Gadkari’s name has not found unanimity even within the Sangh. Suresh Soni, Bhagwat’s deputy who was present when Rajnath called on the RSS chief today and held talks for nearly two hours, has been insisting that the next party president be from Delhi. By inference, this would have to be Arun Jaitley or Sushma Swaraj or M. Venkaiah Naidu.

Bhagwat, said sources, is not overly bothered about Gadkari’s “lack of a national profile”. “Leaders are not born, they are made,” a Sangh source said, trying to explain Bhagwat’s line of thinking.

However, a large section of the BJP believes the party-RSS disjunct is “almost irreparable”, not because of “ego clashes” but because of the expectations of a new generation of voters from mainstream politicians.

“The RSS should see things for what they are. Their spiel on Akhand Bharat (greater India) and morality doesn’t make sense to the younger generations who do not understand why India should want to integrate Afghanistan and Pakistan and bring more trouble upon itself. The BJP has to rework its politics and strategies to cope with a new phalanx of leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Mayavati and Raj Thackeray,” a BJP source said. He wondered how well someone like Gadkari was placed to handle such expectations.

It couldn’t be confirmed whether Bhagwat and Rajnath discussed Advani’s exit as Opposition leader and his replacement. But BJP sources said Advani had “assured” Bhagwat he would quit soon after Rajnath did.

Publicly, Sangh spokesperson Ram Madhav insisted that the Bhagwat-Rajnath meeting was a “normal” one.

Sources close to Rajnath said he hadn’t called on the Sangh chief since the August “chintan baithak” and had to discuss the developments over the past three months, including the Karnataka fracas.