BJP's 'marg darshaks' reach end of poll road?

NEW DELHI: A day after 91-year-old L K Advani was benched with BJP picking its chief Amit Shah to contest from Gandhinagar , there were indications of other veterans making room for younger candidates.


Sources said 85-year-old Murli Manohar Joshi , a former party president, might be persuaded to leave the fray in line with the RSS plan to promote young leaders who can be groomed for the future.

Joshi represents Kanpur in the Lok Sabha and, like Advani, is part of the ‘Marg Darshak Mandal’ that was conceived in pursuance of the Sangh Parivar’s decision that those above 75 should not be burdened with executive responsibilities.

The party has replaced two more veterans — former Uttarakhand CMs and present MPs BC Khanduri (Pauri-Garhwal) and Bhagat Singh Koshyari (Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar). The party’s Uttarakhand chief Tirath Singh Rawat has replaced Khanduri, while Ajay Bhatt will be in the fray from Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar.

Former Union minister Kalraj Mishra, who was elected from Deoria in UP in 2014, as well as sitting member from Khunti in Jharkhand, Karia Munda, are also said to be inclined to hang up their boots.

There is also a possibility of other seniors like Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan , former Himachal Pradesh CM Shanta Kumar and Madhubani MP Hukumdev Narain Yadav exiting the fray.

The party released a list of 184 candidates from 20 states on Thursday. Six sitting MPs from UP, including Union minister Krishna Raj were dropped. Raj, who was replaced by Arun Sagar from Shahjahanpur, is the second Union minister who failed to make it to the final candidates’ list. Bandaru Dattatreya, who served as labour minister, has been replaced with Kishan Reddy in Secunderabad .

Santosh Ahlawat, a woman MP from Jhunjhunu, has also been dropped. With the party dropping several of its women MPs, it is clear that the leadership is not willing to let, like stature and experience, considerations of political correctness come in the way of the application of the twin criteria of performance and winnability for selection of nominees.

This is illustrated by the decision to drop Ram Shankar Katheria , who is chairman of the SC Commission and was billed as one of the rising Dalit faces in the party.

Advani played a major role in the revival of BJP after its debacle in 1984 when it had won only two seats in the Lok Sabha.

The original hardliner, Advani embarked on a rath yatra a year after winning from Gandhinagar to push for the construction of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya: a campaign which arguably changed the course of politics. He also launched an intellectual assault on ‘pseudo secularism’ and the politics of ‘appeasement’.