Advani: a saga of missed chances to be PM -Governance Now

Advani: a saga of missed chances to be PM

BJP founder member LK Advani’s dream of becoming the prime minister, was just that, a dream

GN Bureau | April 19, 2017

#LK Advani #Bharatiya Janata Party #BJP #Babri Masjid

Lal Krishna Advani, who twice missed becoming the prime minister, will now have to face the conspiracy charge in the Babri Masjid demolition case following the supreme court order on Wednesday.

Advani, 89, along with other party colleagues like Murli Manohar Joshi, has been charged with making inflammatory speeches that prompted karsevaks to pull down the mosque in 1992. The trial was being held in Rae Bareli.

The BJP leaders will now be tried in Lucknow, where a separate case is ongoing about 20 people accused of the actual demolition of the mosque.

The CBI says that it has evidence that the BJP leaders, who made their speeches on a stage near the mosque on the day that it was razed, were part of the deadly plan to bring down the mosque. The agency says that Advani and other BJP leaders met the night before the mosque was brought down and decided that it would be razed, which makes the demolition a pre-meditated, deliberate event, reported NDTV.

Advani, who joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at the age of 14, rose to head the organisation in 1947. He later became a member of the Jan Sangh, where he became a close aide of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The two became thick friends.

Read: Mobs pull down everything, Babri mosque or Advani!

After Morarji Desai became the prime minister in 1977, Advani was appointed a union minister. In May 1986, he was appointed BJP chief – a position he held till 1988.

In 1990, Advani took out the Ram Rath Yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The yatra began on September 25 and was to culminate at Ayodhya on October 30. However, the yatra was stopped in Bihar and Advani was arrested on October 23 in Samastipur.

The Babri mosque was demolished on December 6, 1992, triggering communal riots that left an estimated 2,000 people dead.

Advani’s political rise continued and he became the home minister in the BJP government in 1988.

In 2002, he became the deputy prime minister.

A Times of India report said that Advani has always been perceived as Vajpayee's number two in BJP circles but this had often resulted in tensions in the government, generally attributed to a "power struggle between the PMO and North Block."

It is believed that the formalisation of Advani's position in the official hierarchy could mean that there will now be greater understanding between the "big two," resulting in the smooth functioning of the government.

After Vajpayee, Advani was the second most powerful BJP leader. But, he did not get to be the prime minister.

In the 2009 general elections, Advani was the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP. The UPA continued in power and the BJP lost, resulting in Advani again missing the coveted post.

In 2014, Advani had to make way for the new prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, who had once been his protégé. That was third time that Advani missed becoming the prime minister, even though the BJP did exceedingly well at the hustings.

It has clearly been a story of missed chances for Advani.

Comments

Other News

Import duty on major edible oils cut

The government has reduced the Basic Customs Duty (BCD) on major imported crude edible oils with a view to moderating domestic edible oil prices, providing relief to consumers and mitigating inflationary pressures arising from the sharp increase in international edible oil prices.

From pyramid to platform: BRICS agenda for Global South

In his opening address at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12, prime minister Narendra Modi did something India`s diplomacy has been building towards for three years: he moved the ‘Voice of the Global South’ from a slogan to a work plan. Addressing the leaders, he argued that t

How to realise the full transformative potential of PM-JAY

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), a welfare scheme which covers approximately 45 crore beneficiaries across India, provides cashless health cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year. It is the largest health insurance scheme which helped crores of poor families by reducing out-of-pocket expend

The missing men in India`s family planning story

Every pregnancy requires two people. Yet India`s family planning programme continues to ask only one of them to bear almost all of its medical consequences. The newly released National Family Health Survey-6 (2023-24) confirms just how entrenched this asymmetry remains: 36.5% of currently married women a

`Development must be judged beyond GDP, with rights and justice at core`

Delivering the IXth Chief Justice M.C. Chagla Memorial Lecture on ‘Human Rights and Sustainable Development Goals’, in Mumbai Friday, former Chief Justice of India Bhushan R. Gavai questioned whether conventional economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), national income,

RTI exposes Rs 16,909 crore cost blowout on Mumbai-Goa Highway

Seventeen years after the centre first approved the widening of National Highway 66 between Mumbai and Goa into a four-lane highway, a fresh RTI reply has revealed a sharp escalation in the project`s sanctioned cost. According to the RTI reply obtained by activist Jeetendra