Peeved Advani makes veiled attack on Modi

Unhappy BJP leader L K Advani on Tuesday went online to obliquely attack Narendra Modi by referring to his old blog on A B Vajpayee, saying the former prime minister has ''no trace of ego or arrogance''.

This comes a day after his close aide Jaswant Singh targeted the party’s prime ministerial candidate for denying him a ticket. Jaswant Singh has accused the present leadership of being arrogant.

Unhappy leaders like Advani and Sushma Swaraj have used social media to frequently express their displeasure with Modi and party president Rajnath Singh. Arun Jaitley, a key aide of Modi, too, has taken to social media to counter criticism from Advani and others.
Advani, peeved at the projection of the Gujarat chief minister as the prime ministerial candidate, did not refer to Modi by name. It was curious to note that though he was eloquent about Vajpayee-led government, he did not mention the party’s candidate for the top post or his achievements.

Directing the readers’ attention to a blog he wrote 10 months ago, he said, “What I regarded Atalji’s most conspicuous trait was that even with such cardinal achievements to his credit I never sensed in him even a trace of ego or arrogance! It is therefore that while talking about the balance sheet of all prime ministers since 1947 I myself can say that he was by far the most outstanding of all!”

Singh, who was denied the Barmer seat, had on Monday filed nomination as an independent in Rajasthan and attacked Modi saying the “NaMo-NaMo tamasha” and the BJP’s decision-making process shows the “arrogance” of the Emergency era. Besides Singh, Swaraj had also criticised party decisions like the induction of B Sriramulu. Replying to her criticism, Jaitley blogged that leaders should learn to take ‘no’.