Chennai, August 16: Refuting media reports that he had directed BJP stalwart L. K. Advani to step down and pave way for younger leaders to take over the reins of the party, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said the issue had never come up during his recent meeting with Advani.
“I met Advani ji. We were discussing many things, but I did not give any direction to him,” the saffron clan chief said at a press conference here on Saturday.
“The succession issue never cropped up,” he reiterated.
“The RSS does not have a problem with anybody,” Bhagwat said, when asked whether he had any problem with Advani continuing as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Advani, too, had dismissed media reports that the RSS chief had asked him to nominate his successor during their one-to-0ne meeting.
“The meeting centred only on the BJP’s performance in the just- concluded budget session of Parliament and the current political situation,” Advani had said.
On whether the older generation should give way to fresh blood in the BJP, Bhagwat said the RSS desired younger leaders to come up in all fields. ” We do it in the RSS and the BJP, too, will decide when and how to do it,” he said.
However, he maintained that the RSS, being an apolitical outfit, had nothing to do with the BJP. ” The BJP is a separate organisation and we don’t direct or operate with them at any level. It is a political party and is capable of taking its own decisions.
“The BJP has views identical to the RSS on many issues. But it does not mean we have our hands on them,” Bhagawat said, declining to comment on queries on the current churning in the saffron party.
“The RSS need not make any assessment on the BJP’s performance in the elections,” he said, claiming that the Lok Sabha results were only a temporary setback for the party. ” A jolt has temporarily destablised them. The party, I hope, will soon recover. Whatever it is, it will have to take care of itself.” Heading an organisation wedded to the concept of ‘Akhand Bharat’, the RSS chief sharply reacted to comments on a Chinese website on the balkanisation of India, asking the Centre to take a serious note of this development.
“China is our competitor in this region and will always try to keep us in the second place. We need not sever ties with that country but should be cautious,” he said.
In his view, the assessment about the ” fragility of India’s unity” was wrong. “Earlier, many had attempted to break the country but didn’t succeed,” he said. “We may have gone through a period of trial and tribulation but we will emerge triumphant.” On the recent Delhi High Court verdict decriminalising homosexuality, Bhagwat called upon all to sit together and take a decision because medical and ethical issues were involved in it. ” The country should not act fashionably in such matters and hurt its tradition,” he said.
Regarding the RSS’s stand on the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka, he said the organisation wanted Colombo to put an end to discrimination against ethnic Tamils. “The RSS is involved in relief missions for the displaced in Sri Lanka,” Bhagwat said.
–Agencies