Advani at the BJP office in Delhi on Thursday. (PTI)

New Delhi, April 8: L.K. Advani today signalled he would retreat into a political shell and not get too involved in party affairs.

When BJP president Nitin Gadkari asked Advani to address the former’s new team of office-bearers, the veteran refused. His pithy message to the office-bearers, who held a meeting for the first time, was: “My blessings are with you, I have nothing more to say.”

Although some of the new functionaries, such as Ananth Kumar, were discovered and mentored by Advani, debutantes like Vani Tripathi had watched Advani mostly from a distance with reverence and awe. They reportedly expected him to give a pep talk, and were disappointed.

Senior leaders such as Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, who are not part of the Gadkari apparatus but were invited because they are Opposition leaders in Parliament, spoke of the BJP’s stand on important bills.

Gadkari, who has been mandated by the RSS to put the BJP back on track, stressed the relevance of the “karyakartas” (workers) — who the party always remembers when it is out of power — and the need for the office-bearers to spend at least eight days every month in training camps in various places so the cadres can bone up on the ideological moorings and contemporary subjects.

This is not the first time in the recent past that Advani has cried off a public appearance. On Tuesday, when the BJP celebrated its foundation day that marked 30 years of its existence with a workers’ meeting in Delhi, he stayed away even though he was in the capital. The workers were told he would address the programme, along with Gadkari, Jaitley and Sushma. Even Sushma didn’t show up despite being in town.

A late evening text message said he had blogged on the occasion. The blog recalled that the BJP was founded on April 6, 1980, which happened to be Easter Sunday that year. Two days earlier, on Good Friday, the Janata Party had expelled the Jan Sangh members from its fold for not sundering their links with the RSS. This had made it impossible for the Janata leaders to co-exist with them.

Advani spent this Good Friday at the Kumbh Mela in Hardwar.

Towards the end of the first phase of the budget session, Advani reportedly told a confidant he felt his “relevance” in the BJP parliamentary party was shrinking and he didn’t know if he was “wanted” any longer.

Despite the palpable self-pity his latest statements and gestures were infused with, as chairman of the BJP parliamentary party, he chairs the meetings of the party MPs as well as those of the NDA.