New Delhi, June 10: The BJP today plunged into a crisis with patriarch L.K. Advani resigning from the party’s policy and decision-making panels, ostensibly in protest against the manner in which his proposals were “rejected” and Narendra Modi was elevated as campaign committee chief.

In a letter to BJP president Rajnath Singh, the 85-year-old Advani said that “for some time”, he had found it “difficult to reconcile either with the current functioning of the party, or the direction in which it is going”. He virtually said he did not recognise the BJP of which he was a founder and an architect of its major electoral victories after the 1984 rout.

“I no longer have the feeling that this is the same idealistic party created by Dr (Syama Prasad) Mookerji, Deendayalji (Upadhyaya), Nanaji (Deshmukh) and (Atal Bihari) Vajpayeeji whose concern was the country and its people. Most leaders of ours are now concerned just with their personal agendas,” the letter said. Rajnath tweeted shortly thereafter that he had not accepted Advani’s resignation from the national executive, the parliamentary board and the central election committee.

But Advani kept his post as the working chairman of the NDA (Vajpayee is still an emeritus chairman), a position he can always leverage to extract support from the BJP’s allies in a crunch situation.

Rajnath called a meeting of the BJP’s parliamentary board this evening. The meeting rejected Advani’s resignation, but Rajnath did not say if a compromise formula had been worked out for the BJP patriarch or if Modi’s elevation was “non-negotiable”, as a section of the party wants it to be.

Expectedly, the Janata Dal (United) and the Shiv Sena commiserated with Advani — the Bihar ally has consistently rejected Modi’s frontline national projection while the Sena has indicated that its first choice for Prime Minister was Sushma Swaraj.

JD(U) president Sharad Yadav said: “The NDA alliance was cobbled together by Atal and Advani. It is not good for the NDA’s health.” Sharad’s colleague K.C. Tyagi went several steps further and said: “This has now become an external issue, the NDA has gone on the ventilator…It will not be very easy for us to remain in the NDA.”

Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut said: “Advani is BJP’s Bhishma Pitamah. (It) Should convince him to change decision.”

The BJP’s pro-Modi votaries seized the allies’ responses, especially those of the JD(U), to rally even more strongly behind Modi, albeit off the record. North Goa MP Shripad Yesso Naik openly said after Sunday’s elevation of Modi that Advani should have backed the party just when it was about to “surge forward”.

But Advani’s resignation, followed by the NDA’s reactions, underscored the challenges before the BJP in foregrounding a polarising figure like Modi, not recognised at the best of times as a team person.

The more pragmatic voices in the BJP were already asking that if he could not carry the entire leadership with him, how would he deal with the party’s existing partners, leave alone the prospect of new ones. The only words of solace for Modi from an external party came from Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa.

The dramatic resignation prompted leaders to rush to Advani’s residence in a bid to pacify him. Sushma, with S.S. Ahluwalia in tow, called on the BJP veteran, hoping to persuade him to withdraw his papers.

Sources, however, maintained Advani was in no mood to reconsider his decision. The BJP seems equally determined to not “roll back” its decision on Modi but ensure he starts his new innings with a “bang”.

Advani had skipped the three-day deliberations of the party in Goa over the weekend citing health reasons. This was the first time Advani had stayed away from the national executive and the office-bearers’ meeting prior to it.

Ironically, on April 12, 2002, addressing the media in Goa at the end of a BJP national executive, Advani had justified the party’s decision to retain Modi as the Gujarat chief minister, despite erstwhile NDA constituents such as the Telugu Desam Party demanding his dismissal over the February-March riots.

Advani defended Modi with his chin up because he was the prime catalyst in a sequence of events that started with a jolt to Modi and ended with a collective thumbs-up for him.