New Delhi: A decade ago, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani was the pair which led the Bharatiya Janata Party. Now, Amit Shah and Narendra Modi are the present and future of BJP.
Since the BJP's inception, it was Atal-Advani duo that steered the party through thick and thin, through electoral victories and reverses. They remained together. That duo is now firmly replaced by Modi and Shah.
But that is where the similarity ends. Long time observers of the BJP feel that an Atal-Advani led BJP was very different from a Modi-Shah led BJP. For starters, the former were always dependent on tricky strategic coalitions but Modi and Shah led the party to its biggest victory ever and never really feeling the pain of managing coalitions.
Vajpayee and Advani grew in stature by creating an entire pool of second generation leaders within the BJP. But Modi and Shah are often critiqued for not giving enough space to the regional leaders.
Vajpayee and Advani managed to position themselves as a duo where one was a hawk, while the other was moderate. With Shah and Modi, that contrast doesn't exist. There was also a healthy rivalry between Vajpayee and Advani, something which is non-existent between the Prime Minister and the new BJP president.
BJP under Vajpayee and Advani, was also considered to be a democratic party, often to a point of fault. In 2005, top BJP leader and current Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti had stormed the BJP headquarters when the top leadership led by Vajpayee and Advani were conducting the BJP Parliamentary Board meeting. That scene is the ultimate sign of democracy leading to indiscipline.
Now with Amit Shah at the helm and with the total support of Modi, barring Kirti Azad episode, the situation has been relatively calmer. The irony though is that Advani today has positioned himself as completely on the opposite side to Narendra Modi, and the ailing Vajpayee not in a position to support him anymore.
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