A number of leaders in the race for the two top jobs in the BJP — party president and Leader of Opposition — rushed to the RSS headquarters here on Friday evening to meet its chief Mohan Bhagwat.
Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar were closeted with the RSS leadership, and reports suggested that efforts were on to hammer out consensus on the future shape of the party leadership. Later, they met at Mr. Advani’s residence.
On Thursday night, BJP president Rajnath Singh met Mr. Bhagwat and gave him an account of the current turmoil in the party.
Party leaders here are of the view that the resignation of Mr. Advani as Leader of the Opposition cannot be postponed for too long after a number of senior leaders have virtually charged him with shifting the blame for the mishandling of the Kandahar hijacking episode.
“By September, the names of new party leaders may be announced, even if the resignations take a few more months,” was how one party leader, who did not want to be named, put it.
