Senior BJP leader LK Advani arrives at the Patna airport on Friday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani on Saturday received a low-profile welcome when he arrived in Patna to attend a Children’s Day function.

Only the party’s state unit president, Mangal Pandey, received him at the airport. Senior party leader Sushil Kumar Modi was in Banka to attend the 60th birth anniversary of former Union minister, late Digvijay Singh, while Nand Kishore Yadav was in Rajgir to inaugurate the training camp of state Ati Pichda Manch. Three Union ministers — Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Ram Kripal Yadav and Giriraj Singh — visiting Patna for the first time since becoming ministers at the Centre — also ignored him.

Former MLC Ganga Prasad and MLC Harendra Kumar were the only two who accompanied Advani — the man credited with having built the BJP and one who was once called lauh purush (iron man) — to the function at the Shoshit Samadhan Kendra, a residential school for children of the musahar (rat-eating) community at Danapur-Bihita Road, 30km west of Patna.

Advani’s countrywide Ramjanmabhoomi movement had pushed the party’s tally up from just 2 seats in 1984 to 86 in the 1989 election. But his stock is evidently falling. Patna Sahib MP Shatrughan Sinha made a brief five-minute appearance at the function.

School principal A.R.Q. Khan said: “Sushil Kumar Modi and Nand Kishore Yadav were also invited to this function.”

The party leadership has already dropped Advani from its top decision-making bodies and accommodated him in the newly-created ‘Margdarshak Mandal’. Advani declined say anything. “I do not want to talk any politics on this occasion, I have just come here to attend the function,” he said.