Gadkari blames 'senior leaders' for BJP's plight

After two successive Lok Sabha election defeats, the Bharatiya Janata Party was in an introspective mood on Wednesday with its president Nitin Gadkari making a blunt speech attacking unnamed leaders for the party's plight, while senior leader L K Advani asked partymen to work for cohesion.

The remarks of Advani and Gadkari came on the eve of the two-day national council meeting of the party that is expected to come out with a roadmap for the future to again bring the BJP at the centrestage.

The party also apparently sought to woo the Dalits with Gadkari visiting a Dalit home in nearby Mhow, the birthplace of B R Ambedkar in what looked like Rahul Gandhi style. BJP president Gadkari minced no words to attack the functioning of the party saying that the difficulties being faced by the organisation were not due to ordinary workers but those senior leaders whom it has given much.

"The problems in the party are not because of small workers, but those whom it has given much. They will have to think whether their political career is important or political ideology and spread of the party," Gadkari said in his inaugural address at the national executive in Indore.

In a near admission that the BJP was not a party with a difference but differences, he told partymen to draw a bigger line for the good of the organisation.

"While projecting your line as bigger, you should not do anything that would make lines of others smaller," he said.

Partymen will have to work towards the "larger goal of the organisation with cohesion and dedication", said Advani, who was the party's prime ministerial candidate in the 2009 polls.

Advani praised Gadkari for his qualities and said the rise of an ordinary worker to the "summit post" of a national party is something that can happen only in a party like the BJP.

He asked the executive members not to forget the larger goal of the party and said that all talk of differences in the party and prophecies that the BJP would be dissipated were humbug.

Advani, whom Gadkari has hailed as his political guide and mentor, told the BJP chief that he should not feel dwarfed in the presence of senior leaders as the process of new leadership emerging is an evolutionary one. All leaders who are capable and able will rise in the party, he said.