New Delhi, June 18: Narendra Modi called on Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Murli Manohar Joshi and L.K. Advani in Delhi today, two days after turning down an invite from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Ayodhya clerics to visit the pilgrim town this week.

If that was a signal he did not want to reinforce the perception of being a “hardliner, the meetings today were a message to the Sangh that he was as keen as it was to project a “united” parivar.

The “business-like” chief minister, who has recently been anointed head of the BJP’s national campaign committee, ended his day by convening a meeting of party general secretaries and the members of its programme implementation panel.

The meeting discussed the broad contours of the campaign, with Modi flagging corruption, price rise and good governance and making no mention of Hindutva, sources said.

General secretary Ananth Kumar said the office-bearers would work out the nitty-gritty based on Modi’s directives in a day or two.

While his call on Vajpayee is symbolic given the former Prime Minister’s precarious health, Modi’s visits to the homes of Joshi and Advani are significant, the sources said. He spent 45 minutes each with them.

A source close to Advani said: “It was a good evening that ended on a positive note. I hope the choice of the adjectives conveys the sense of what I have said.”

Advani had skipped the BJP national executive in Goa that elevated Modi, and resigned all party posts a day after. Although he did withdraw the resignation soon after, even Modi’s backers agree that it rendered the Gujarat chief minister’s position a “bit vulnerable”. The incident hammered home to Modi that his position was not quite like that of a Nehru-Gandhi in the Congress.

Murli Manohar Joshi told The Telegraph: “He thanked me for endorsing his appointment by the national executive. He said he would take my guidance and advice before finalising the party’s agenda in future.” Sources said Modi had figured out that he would have to take those at every tier of the BJP’s hierarchy along with him, and not just those from the middle and lower rungs who tirelessly sing paeans to him.

On top of it, the shadow of the Ishrat Jahan “fake” encounter killing looms large over his confidant Amit Shah, now a BJP general secretary who has been assigned charge of Uttar Pradesh, the make-or-mar state for the party in 2014.

Shah was Gujarat’s home minister when the teenager was killed. The Gujarat High Court, where the trial is on, has set the CBI a deadline of July 4 to file the chargesheet.

Advani “subtly” conveyed to Modi that whoever spearheaded the BJP’s national campaigns in the past, him included, the party’s structures and functioning style “only” allowed for a “comprehensive and composite” effort that had a place for “everybody, from the top to the bottom”.

Sources said it was Advani’s way of telling Modi there was no room in the BJP for a “personality cult” of the Congress type.

The Gujarat chief minister heard him out, thanked him for his support, stressed that the need of the hour was to display a “unified” face and assured him he would seek his “advice” before fine-tuning the campaign strategy.

Sources quoted Modi as appearing neither “over-confident nor shaky” during his meetings with the veterans.