(From top) Naidu, Naqvi, Jaswant and Kumar: Humiliated

New Delhi, March 4: The BJP today opened an election “war room” at its headquarters on Ashoka Road, ostensibly to take care of logistics for the general election.

But the real reason for the second “war room” — one is already running at another address and is manned by L.K. Advani’s personal aides — could be the party’s sulking leaders.

BJP sources said Venkaiah Naidu, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Jaswant Singh, Ananth Kumar and others had felt slighted after Advani, the BJP’s candidate for Prime Minister, last month dismantled the party’s central election office and instead gave charge of individual states to different leaders.

While Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi did not miss the central election office since they are contesting the polls themselves and are busy with their own preparations, others like Venkaiah and Arun Jaitley were unhappy about the loss of their managerial role. For the past year, these leaders had been working for the election from the central office.

Venkaiah, who was given charge of the southern states, felt particularly humiliated as the BJP has little stake in any southern state except Karnataka, where chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa does not brook interference.

The discontent intensified when the party realised Advani had allowed Jaitley to quietly recapture his central role over the past month.

Jaitley had asked to be made head of the central election management committee, but this was not possible because the central mechanism was dispensed with. Other senior leaders had also opposed giving him prominence after Jaitley opted not to contest the election against the party’s wishes.

So, Advani did not formalise any position for Jaitley but gave him charge of all the three vital tasks: media, campaign and finances.

As other senior leaders sulked, Jaitley quietly emerged as the key strategist. He is in charge of finalising campaign strategy, choosing slogans, working out advertising plans for the media and managing finances.

This created much bitterness among the BJP brass, who raised the demand for an election office at the party headquarters.

Then followed the balancing by party president Rajnath Singh to send out a message that Jaitley was not the sole election in-charge.

At the launch of the second “war room”, Venkaiah said the office would implement decisions taken by others. This suggests that the first war room and Jaitley will still handle strategy, while the new one will be in charge of logistics.

Venkaiah listed tasks like co-ordination, travel plans, feedback, monitoring state-level expenses and communicating with the Election Commission that the new office would handle.