Both are poignant Prince Charmings of sorts, their lives laced with early tragedy and redolent with future promise, sharing the most famous surname — and a legacy to match — in the politics of this country. Yet in terms of personality and approach to their chosen profession, they could not be more starkly different. Varun Gandhi, all of 26, has the confidence and bearing, the ambition and assurance of a born leader. Although a decade older, Rahul Gandhi — deaf to the pleas of Congressmen eager to anoint him their supreme leader — prefers to remain on the fringes, offering all interlocutors his stock reply: “I am still learning.”

On the face of it, therefore, the BJP leadership’s decision not to field Varun Gandhi in the Vidisha Lok Sabha byelection at the end of this month seems almost cruel. It is no secret that young Varun had set his sights on entering the Lok Sabha from the BJP’s Madhya Pradesh pocket borough and, till the last minute, many thought he was bound to get it. After all, he supposedly had the full backing of the BJP’s Big Two, Advani and Vajpayee. More important, despite his family background, he was quick to get into the good books of the RSS — attending functions by the side of Sangh supremo, K.S. Sudarshan, and penning hawkish articles on national security in the Organiser.

But neither the BJP bigwigs nor the Sangh’s elders succeeded in getting him the much coveted ticket into the political big league. That denial, certainly, has something to do with the continuing leadership crisis within the BJP. With no clear ‘high command’ in place since the Advani-RSS face-off last year, state units have become a lot more assertive. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan may not have succeeded in getting his wife the nomination, but it was easy for him to stave off the imposition of an “outsider”.

... contd.