Advani has played double game by announcing his decision to go on Rath yatra. On the one hand he wanted to escape from arrest on the other he wanted to prove his supremacy in the party to fulfill his dream of being prime minister of India.
After three years of incident, Advani has finally confessed in the parliament that he was privy to the note
for vote scam. He also know that government has no role in the probe into the scam as it is being monitored by supreme court which has pulled Delhi police so many times for tardy probe into the matter. Due to SC tough posture Amar Singh and other two MPs are in jail in the case. Now Advani himself has confessed his role in the scam, the court might take notice of it and action could be taken against him too. His right hand man Sudhindra kulkerni is also likely to be arrested soon when he returns from US.
Advani announcement took party colleagues particularly president Nitin Gadkari by surprise because the yatra would bring the focus back on him in a scenario where the BJP had resolved not to project anyone as its prime ministerial candidate for the next Lok Sabha elections in 2014.
Nitin Gadkari had recently said that no individual leader would be projected as a prime ministerial candidate and that a collective team of top leaders would be showcased instead.
But Advani has bigger plans. “I have decided to take out a yatra against corruption. Its focus will be good governance and clean politics,” Advani said at a press conference here. He added that he had spoken about his decision to Gadkari and other top party leaders, who had endorsed the move immediately.
However several senior party leaders are surprised by the development but they are not opening their mouth officially, however privately they are talking of Octogenarian leader dream of becoming prime minister. “We wanted him to lead the party but RSS did not want to see him even as leader of opposition,” said a senior leader of the party.
At press conference Advani was flanked by Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, leaders of the opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, respectively.
Recently Advani conveyed to Gadkari and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at an important meeting in Ujjain that the people rallied for a leader not the party.”
Advani on Thursday dared the government to arrest him in the cash for vote scam. Speaking in the Lok Sabha on the scam, Advani claimed the sting operation was done when three BJP lawmakers were bribed by a close associate of the then Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh in July 2008 with his full knowledge.
“Whatever the MPs did was right. If the BJP MPs have been arrested in the cash for votes then I should also be arrested. If you have arrested them, put me also in jail,” Advani said.
In 1989 Advani embarked on a “Rath Yatra” to mobilize “karsevaks” to converge upon the Babri Masjid to offer prayers. This “Rath Yatra”, undertaken in an air-conditioned van decorated to look like a chariot, started from Somnath in Gujarat and had covered a large part of Northern India until it was brought to a halt by the Chief Minister of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav. However by then, so many were killed in a surge of communal violence that followed the trail of Advani’s cavalcade.