File photo of Sanjay Joshi who resigned from BJP on Friday.
NEW DELHI: BJP chief Nitin Gadkari on Friday stripped Sanjay Joshi, Narendra Modi's bete noire, of all party responsibilities, completing the capitulation before Modi.
The Gujarat CM secured Joshi's exit from the party's national executive as the price for attending the meeting of the key decision-making body last month in Mumbai, but was insisting on Joshi being divested of all key responsibilities as the pre-condition for a durable ceasefire with the party leadership and the RSS.
The latest concession to Modi should cement his understanding with Gadkari and his mentors in the RSS.
Gujarat CM had threatened to quit
BJP chief Nitin Gadkari's decision to accept Sanjay Joshi's resignation confirms the party's willingness to propitiate Narendra Modi as well as his growing desire to leverage his popularity with the base to extract his pound of flesh. Modi attended the party's Mumbai national executive on a triumphant note, overshadowing everyone else, although it was supposed to be Gadkari's show.
Joshi's sidelining also attests to his new-found desire to project power at the centre. According to sources Gadkari had tried to persuade him to go easy on Joshi, now that he had secured his ouster from national executive. However, he gave in when the Gujarat CM stuck to his demand to remove Joshi from BJP affairs altogether. This is the second instance of a RSS pracharak on loan to the BJP being unceremoniously dumped to appease powerful party leaders. In 2000, party general secretary K N Govindacharya was removed from the party at the instance of the then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Govindacharya, seen by many as the party's ideologue and the man behind party's experiment at social engineering, had incurred Vajpayee's wrath by describing him as a "mask", saying that it was Advani who called the shots.
A detractor of Modi who played a role in the latter being banished from Gujarat during the chief ministership of Keshubhai Patel, Joshi had been in Modi's crosshairs for long. Modi had threatened to resign along with other members of the BJP national executive from Gujarat, if Joshi had been allowed to continue.
The Gujarat CM secured Joshi's exit from the party's national executive as the price for attending the meeting of the key decision-making body last month in Mumbai, but was insisting on Joshi being divested of all key responsibilities as the pre-condition for a durable ceasefire with the party leadership and the RSS.
The latest concession to Modi should cement his understanding with Gadkari and his mentors in the RSS.
Gujarat CM had threatened to quit
BJP chief Nitin Gadkari's decision to accept Sanjay Joshi's resignation confirms the party's willingness to propitiate Narendra Modi as well as his growing desire to leverage his popularity with the base to extract his pound of flesh. Modi attended the party's Mumbai national executive on a triumphant note, overshadowing everyone else, although it was supposed to be Gadkari's show.
Joshi's sidelining also attests to his new-found desire to project power at the centre. According to sources Gadkari had tried to persuade him to go easy on Joshi, now that he had secured his ouster from national executive. However, he gave in when the Gujarat CM stuck to his demand to remove Joshi from BJP affairs altogether. This is the second instance of a RSS pracharak on loan to the BJP being unceremoniously dumped to appease powerful party leaders. In 2000, party general secretary K N Govindacharya was removed from the party at the instance of the then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Govindacharya, seen by many as the party's ideologue and the man behind party's experiment at social engineering, had incurred Vajpayee's wrath by describing him as a "mask", saying that it was Advani who called the shots.
A detractor of Modi who played a role in the latter being banished from Gujarat during the chief ministership of Keshubhai Patel, Joshi had been in Modi's crosshairs for long. Modi had threatened to resign along with other members of the BJP national executive from Gujarat, if Joshi had been allowed to continue.
