Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh on Friday gave full credit for the party’s impressive victory in the Lok Sabha elections to its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and said the roles of veterans, including L.K. Advani, would be decided with general consensus.
“The role of Mr. Advani, who is the senior-most party leader and our guardian, will be decided after a meeting of the central parliamentary board,” Mr. Singh said while replying to queries at a crowded press conference at the party headquarters here. He dismissed as “baseless” reports about differences among party leaders over Mr. Modi’s leadership.
Flanked by senior leaders Amit Shah, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar, the BJP chief said the mandate was for change in the country. “Time has come to re-write the Indian success story,” he said, adding that the BJP’s win cut across geographical, social, religious, and caste barriers.
Mr. Singh said it was for the first time after 1984 that a single party and pre-poll alliance had got a clear majority to form the government at the Centre. He asked party workers to show restraint and avoid using provocative language against any rival or any segment of society.
Talking to the media later, Mr. Shah said the 2014 poll victory was the biggest for a non-Congress alliance in independent India. He said the Congress had failed to reach double digit in many of the States. Elated over the impressive win of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Shah said the State rewarded the party with 73 of the 80 seats, the biggest harvest from a single State for the party. “Of the seven seats which we could not win, five went to Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family and the Congress retained two of the Gandhi family,” Mr. Shah said.
