Advani struggles to stay put

The meeting discussed about the fate of a scheduled meeting of the party's highest decision-making forum in Cheannai next week in the light of renewed pressure on Advani to quit as party chief.

While the RSS, the ideological fountain head of the Sangh Parivar, has already stepped up its efforts to ensure the change at the top of BJP, Advani's woes were compounded on Sunday when four senior party leaders, two of them former chiefs of the party, questioned his leadership.

Apparently at the prodding of RSS, four senior BJP leaders Madan Lal Khurana, Piyarelal Khandelwal, Jana Krishnamurthy and Bangaru Laxman joined the "oust-Advani" campaign, signalling the outbreak of revolt within the party against his leadership.

Having a tough time Advani is reported to have spoken to RSS chief K S Sudarshan Saturday night and agreed to step down from one of the two posts he is holdingBJP president and leader of the opposition in parliament.

The RSS top leadership had met former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other senior BJP leaders here last week and conveyed him that Advani must make way soon for having "strayed" from the ideological mooring of the Sangh.

But with a section of senior party leaders, including Vajpayee, rallying round Advani at that time, the BJP chief appeared to have weathered the storm triggered by his remarks on Jinnah for a short time. Now four senior party leaders have joined the "oust-Advani" drive making the challenge to the BJP leadership an open chapter, at least for the RSS.

The RSS is understood to be extremely annoyed by Advani's "refusal" to step down as party chief and the Sangh took this as its defiance by a man who till the other day was its poster boy of aggressive Hindutva.

Khurana shot off a letter to Advani telling him that "it is public knowledge that the RSS leadership has lost confidence in you and had expected that you as its disciplined member should resign from the presidentship of the party. Under the present circumstances, I find it impossible to continue under your leadership".

Khandelwal stopped short of asking for Advani's resignation but said the party should discuss the controversy set off by the party chief's remarks during his Pakistan visit and the principle of "one-man-one-post". Krishnamurthy and Laxman were understood to have expressed similar views.