Shuffle Sham ; the Organisational Revamp in the Party Is a Balancing Act by Rajnath Singh. The Seal of Presidential Assertion Is Missing.

Summary

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Caution has become the byword for the Age of Rajnath in BJP. No desperate measures; no disrespect to the still looming elders. Being a fine artist of please-all, BJP President Rajnath Singh strives to achieve harmony out of organisational disorder. That is what he has done with the latest changes in the party. He has struck a perfect balance between the old and the new, with no clear winners or losers. The ideological arbiters in the Parivar can't complain and the leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani can't say he has been treated less venerably. Team Rajnath may be a triumph of balancing act. It doesn't have the presidential seal-or zeal.

In a long and labourious process, the party chief finalised his list after consulting the twin patriarchs-Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani-as well as the Sangh leadership. Though most of the Advani loyalists like Balbir Punj, Ananth Kumar and Ravi Shankar Prasad were rewarded, it was not, in the end, an Advani dream team by proxy. Yashwant Sinha, who has been brought in as the vice- president, can't be called an Advani groupie. And Rajnath in any way could not have displeased Nagpur. Under pressure from the RSS, Ram Lal Agarwal, a senior pracharak, was brought in to replace the controversial Sanjay Joshi as general secretary, organisational affairs.

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Shuffle Sham ; the Organisational Revamp in the Party Is a Balancing Act by Rajnath Singh. The Seal of Presidential Assertion Is Missing.

Where is the Rajnath stamp? He has always been intrigued by the punditry that describes leaders with a state as regional leaders and leaders with not even one state as national leaders. In this revamping, he has brought some grassroots performers, not the ...

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