L.K. Advani was back to playing Narendra Modi against Shivraj Singh Chauhan today to establish that the Madhya Pradesh chief minister was the BJP’s super-achiever, not his Gujarat counterpart, and therefore deserved to be the party’s mascot for 2014.
At a meeting of party workers in Gwalior, Advani compared Chauhan with Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He claimed that like the former Prime Minister, Chauhan was “humble” and had not let success make him “arrogant”.
He ran down Modi’s oft-repeated claims on Gujarat’s “development” and “growth”, saying all that he had done was to better an “economically healthy state” while Chauhan had turned a “bimaru” (ailing) state like Madhya Pradesh into a “healthy” one.
The comparison with Vajpayee and the stress on Chauhan’s “humility” were direct hits aimed at Modi who is perceived even by sections of the BJP as “inaccessible” and “arrogant”.
Advani had flagged the Chauhan-Modi comparison at a meeting of the BJP national council in March this year to the consternation of cadres surcharged in their chorus to project Modi as the party’s candidate for Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha elections due next year.
Today, in Gwalior, Advani was quoted by news agencies as saying: “I often tell Narendra Modi that Gujarat was already an economically healthy state when he was sent as the CM. He has only made Gujarat a better state. But Madhya Pradesh was a ‘bimaru’ state, and it underwent a total development change and evolved as a healthy state for which I give full credit to Shivraj Singh Chauhan.”
Speaking on Vajpayee and Chauhan, Advani was quoted as saying: “Vajpayee did not have any shortcomings and one of his best qualities was his humility. I see the same in Chauhan. He has changed the destiny of Madhya Pradesh with his developmental politics but is still as polite and soft-spoken. He never permitted arrogance to enter his mind.”
Advani singled out the Madhya Pradesh government’s “Ladli Laxmi Yojana” for commendation and urged the Centre to adopt it. The scheme gives a girl child Rs 1 lakh on turning 21.
Yesterday, Modi’s cheerleaders in the capital had staged a rock concert to root for him as the party’s prime ministerial candidate. A singer had even implored Advani to endorse Modi’s candidacy.
A day later, he indicated who his choice was.
Advani’s praise for Chauhan, however, did not go down well even in the Madhya Pradesh BJP. Senior state leaders rejected the comparison between Chauhan and Modi, much less between Chauhan and Vajpayee, and said it was time the leadership issue was resolved.