JOIN USIn another indication that he is falling out of favour with the men in charge of the BJP, party patriarch and NDA working chairperson L K Advani found the plaque bearing his name missing from the office allotted to him in the Parliament building.
Advani discovered the missing plate on the ground floor room allotted to him since the beginning of the UPA II regime when the house took a recess, forcing the senior leader to rest in a room attached to the BJP Parliamentary party office.
The room he rested in was allotted during the previous Lok Sabha to the then deputy speaker Gopinath Munde, who died in a road accident on June 3 after taking over as rural development minister.
The BJP patriarch did not respond when reporters asked him for his take on the incident, but the missing plaque sparked off wild speculations that it was done to humiliate him.
Advani does not enjoy good equations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and did not succeed in getting the Lok Sabha Speakers’ chair that would have kept him out of the government’s way.
Confusion prevailed throughout the day over the nameplate, with BJP sources suggesting that their senior leader will be given a room in the row marked for treasury benches in line with the change of government.
But some suggested that the missing nameplate is an indication that Advani is no longer the working chairperson of the NDA.
Advani was made NDA working chairperson in 2004 after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who held the position until then, was taken ill. Vajpayee continues to be NDA working chairperson.