(From left) Chief minister Nitish Kumar and BJP leaders LK Advani, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Sushma Swaraj, CP Thakur and Arun Jaitley at Kranti Maidan in Sitab Diara on Tuesday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Sitab Diara/Chhapra, Oct. 11: In the bowl of sand and dust that can tire even the tough ones, 83-year-old L.K. Advani today looked remarkably young and agile as he embarked on his 40-day Jan Chetna Yatra at Sitab Diara — the birthplace of Loknayak Jaya Prakash Narayan.

Clad in a black bandi (jacket), off-white kurta and a sparkling white dhoti with his forehead smeared with red vermilion, Advani looked even brighter than the BJP’s GeNext leaders like Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj who were present on the dais set up on a sand field along the river Ghaghra at Lalatola, a part of JP’s ancestral village.

“Sushma and Arun, who might be harbouring prime ministerial ambitions, will certainly envy the charisma and agility of the BJP patriarch,” a senior BJP leader said. Sushma, Jaitley, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ananth Kumar looked visibly jaded, perhaps by the humidity of the day coupled with the sand and dust of Sitab Diara.

JD(U) leader and chief minister Nitish Kumar’s unalloyed support to Advani’s campaign against corruption might have boosted the morale of the BJP veteran, who is of late under palpable pressure not only from the RSS but also the GeNext leaders in his party to recede into an advisory role and pave way for the new generation.

Nitish said: “I will not support your (Advani’s) yatra only through words and speeches. I will support it through dynamic actions too. I welcome you to Bihar, which has already initiated some effective steps to nail corrupt functionaries. You have your government in Bihar which has shown the nation the way to fight the scourge of corruption.”

Reciprocating the CM’s gesture with a calm face and the natural smile, Advani said: “Nitish was my colleague in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led Union cabinet. Keeping his dexterity in mind, I knew it that Bihar was up for a big change under his stewardship once the NDA bagged the required number in the Bihar Assembly in November 2005. And the change is here for the entire nation to see.”

To match his yatra’s objectives, Advani directed his diatribe against the Manmohan Singh government and targeted the UPA ministers jailed for their alleged involvement in various scams. He dwelt upon how corruption has eaten into the body politic of the UPA-II and how the people of the country were getting disillusioned with the political class.

“It is time to rise to the occasion and inculcate confidence among the people in the political system. We must take inspiration from Loknayak Jaya Prakash Narayan, who not only created awareness among the people against corruption and autocracy but also succeeded in restoring democracy in India by overthrowing the then Congress government,” Advani said.

But more than the attack on the UPA-II, it was Advani’s praise for Nitish that drew thunderous applause from all those who had gathered at Sitab Diara and Chhapra. The BJP veteran, sensing the mood of the people, spoke more in praise of the Bihar chief minister while taking a potshot at RJD chief Lalu Prasad, without naming the latter.

“See how zamana (time) has changed in 20 years. A chief minister had arrested me during my first rath yatra in Bihar. Now, the state has a chief minister who is flagging off my yatra. What a change!”

Advani was most eloquent among all BJP leaders. Jaitley and Sushma, who did not address the Sitab Diara gathering, rose to address a mammoth crowd at Chhapra. Jaitley chose the 2G controversy and Commonwealth Games scam to pin the UPA government. “The Bofors deal involved Rs 64 crore, which is nothing when compared to the misappropriation of Rs 1.6 lakh crore in the allocation of 2G spectrum,” Jaitely said. Sushma, on the other hand, loaded her speech with statistics and spiced it up with couplets from Urdu poetry.

Advani, a veteran of six rath yatras across the country, scored over his peers by reeling off interesting anecdotes from his previous campaigns. He, however, kept his speech clean of references to Somnath, Ayodhya and Ram, apparently in a bid to morph his image into a moderate and secular leader and toe the lines of JP rather than those of the hardliners in the Sangh parivar.

Many leaders and spectators were surprised to see Advani’s agility and tried to figure out the “secret behind the youthfulness” of an 83-year-old who will turn 84 next month. Advani’s wife, Kamala Advani, and daughter, Pratibha, accompanied the leader in his state-of-the-art chariot.

The yatra, which was formally announced by Nitish at Sitab Diara, had its first stop at Chhapra where Advani boarded the air-conditioned chariot that the chief minister flagged off. The chariot has an elevator by which Advani rose to wave at the people who had gathered at Ami, Doriganj, Hajipur and Mahatma Gandhi Setu on his way to Patna, where he addressed his third public meeting today. Around 100 vehicles — both big and small — trailed Advani’s rath criss-crossing north Bihar today.