Amit Shah files nomination from Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat
Expresses confidence that the people will contribute to bringing the Modi government once again
Hours after launching the poll manifesto, BJP president Amit Shah on Monday met veteran leaders LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.
The meeting comes days after Advani and Joshi were denied tickets by the party for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
The meeting is being viewed as a means to disperse the tension between the party and the veteran leaders.
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LK Advani was replaced with Amit Shah in Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency, while MM Joshi was replaced by Satyadev Pachauri in Kanpur.
Both the leaders were extremely unhappy over the way in which their names were dropped from the BJP list.
Advani did not say anything about being dropped from the party’s list of Lok Sabha candidates but wrote a blog asserting his party never regarded those who disagreed with it politically as “anti-national”.
Joshi, after being denied party ticket, had written a letter stating that the BJP had conveyed to him that he should not contest the ensuing parliamentary election from Kanpur and elsewhere.
Advani and Joshi were the founding members of the BJP, along with former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
A number of veteran leaders, including Shanta Kumar, BC Khanduri and Kariya Munda- all in their 80s- have not been fielded by the BJP in the polls, seen as part of its strategy under PM Modi and Amit Shah to ease them out and groom younger leaders in their place.
LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were moved out of the BJP’s highest decision-making body, Parliamentary Board, in 2014 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the party to victory and Shah was made its president.
Both veterans were made members of ‘Margdarshak Mandal’ (a group of mentors), a body which has never met.
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