LK Advani

New Delhi, Sept. 13: L.K. Advani is expected to “clarify” his position on the leadership muddle when the BJP national executive meets here on September 30 and October 1 to assuage the sense of disquiet since he announced his anti-corruption yatra last week.

Sources said Advani was likely to make it clear that his road show — scheduled tentatively to start from Karamsad in Gujarat on October 11, Jayaprakash Narayan’s birth anniversary — had nothing to do with who would lead the party in the next Lok Sabha elections.

They said Advani’s proposed “clarification” was meant to ease concerns among the party’s prime ministerial aspirants ever since he announced his yatra.

The octogenarian leader had skirted queries on the leadership conundrum when he unveiled his plans to the media. He neither confirmed nor denied the suggestion on whether he was in the running for the country’s top job and, in the process, gave “sleepless nights” to his senior colleagues, the sources said.

However, not everyone in the BJP views Advani’s proposed yatra with trepidation.

If some felt his still overarching presence shackled Opposition leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj and thwarted the proper emergence of second-generation leaders, those in the BJP’s third rung had uncharitable words about their immediate seniors.

“At this age, Advaniji is again setting out on a yatra for 40 days. Even if any of our second-generation leaders travels for 10 days continuously on the road, I will bow before them,” said a third-rung leader.

“Even today, these leaders cannot keep pace with Advani. As he walks and takes giant steps, they huff and puff behind him.”

In the post-Vajpayee-Advani phase, the power equations panned out in such a way that those squeezed in the generation between the Big Two and Jaitley, Sushma, Rajnath Singh and Narendra Modi were nudged out of the frame in the name of a “generational makeover”.

They included Jaswant Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, who either fell by the wayside or just managed to stay afloat in the last two years.

Those leaders who make up the third rung of the BJP’s hierarchy such as Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Prakash Javadekar and Shahnawaz Hussain are expected to accompany Advani during much of his yatra, though general secretary Ananth Kumar will be his permanent fixture on the “rath”.