L.K. Advani

New Delhi, Sept. 18: The BJP has virtually forgotten L.K. Advani’s soon-to-begin yatra in the razzle-dazzle of Narendra Modi’s Sadbhavna Mission.

The yatra was to be flagged off from Karamsad, the birthplace of Sardar Vallabhai Patel in Gujarat, but it seems the venue might be changed to Bihar’s Sitabdiara.

An Advani aide claimed the reason for the shift was that Karamsad explained only part of his leader’s symbolic choice. While Advani has for long adopted Patel as his role model and wanted to pay obeisance to his hero, the date fixed for the launch, October 11, is Jayaprakash Narayan’s birth anniversary.

Advani reportedly felt there was no point getting two symbols mixed up because that would have diluted the political import of Patel and JP in his journey against “corruption and unclean governance” that these leaders had stood for in their own ways.

So Advani zeroed in on JP’s birthplace in Bihar. Besides, the aide explained that while Patel inspired the BJP, JP, in his lifetime, had appealed to a “wider political spectrum” and carried a more contemporary resonance.

Underlying the knotty reasoning was a deeper impulse at work for Advani, sources said, that was rooted in the Modi show and the fear that not only was the BJP embracing the Gujarat chief minister with enthusiasm but the other parties did not quite display the revulsion of the past towards him.

“The clear message from Ahmedabad is that our cadres want Modi to be declared as the PM candidate at the earliest,” said a spokesperson. However, the enthusiasm of the rank-and-file was part of the Gujarat-Delhi discourse.

The other, and to the BJP, more startling aspect was how Modi — who had portrayed himself as a friendless, work-obsessed soul — showed for the first time that he was capable of reaching out to other political leaders.

Sources claimed unbeknown to his less discerning party colleagues, the debate he set off on Centre-state relations pegged on issues like CBI “misuse”, “depriving” states of their share of the financial cake through the goods and sales tax regime and the appointment of Lokayuktas, touched a chord in the regional parties.

They admitted that Advani, like other BJP leaders, was baffled with his independent moves to get allies on board and enhance his suitability as a national leader. “While he might not have succeeded hugely at the first shot, Modi proved that he was second to none in the party in his outreach to other parties. He wanted to bust the myth he was still untouchable,” a source said.

His rival claimants for primeministership had hoped they would beat him to the finishing line on the acceptability quotient. The BJP took note of a loaded statement from DMK chief M. Karunanidhi that while he agreed with Modi’s stand on communal harmony, the actions of 2002 cannot be forgotten.

“That’s not outright rejection. After his rival (J. Jayalalithaa)’s visit, we expected him to go hammer and tongs at Modi,” a source said.

Barring two chief ministers, Shivraj Singh Chauhan (currently out of India) and Raman Singh (busy with “other preoccupations”), every BJP worthy turned up for the fast.

Ananth Kumar, the general secretary in charge of Advani’s yatra, sprinted towards Ahmedabad after landing from Singapore where he had accompanied Sushma Swaraj on an official visit. Kumar was supposed to straighten out the nitty-gritties of the road show but he reportedly said that would have to wait for a couple of more days.

Sushma’s first tweet on touching Delhi was she would be at “Narendrabhai Modi’s” fast on Monday.

There are signs that the Congress’s strategy was faltering. The party calculated that rather than cornering Modi over the 2002 violence, because it had proved counterproductive in the past two elections, it would focus on his “corruption” and “misgovernance”.