Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her son and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi deservedly get all the credit for soundly defeating the BJP and the umbrella NDA in LS 2009. BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate L.K. Advani’s ambitions all fell flat as the Congress made huge dents into the BJP territory while turning out exceptional electoral performance in its core states of Andhra, Delhi and Haryana. A close look at the election results show that many within the BJP and particularly the Sangh Parivar also deserve kudos for letting the party down by promoting infighting, factionalism or simply refusing to take action against errant leaders.

However, the biggest pumpkin is reserved for the Sangh Parivar which did its best to undermine L.K. Advani by giving a long rope to the mischievous activities of party president Rajnath Singh. Not only the RSS took its sweet time in agreeing to Advani’s candidature as Prime Minister for LS 2009, its joint general secretary Suresh Soni virtually ran and is still running the party through his protégé Rajnath Singh. Of course, Advani is equally to be blamed for the debacle as the man refused to exercise his influence and stature in controlling the infighting within.

Even at the peak of Rajnath versus Arun Jaitely covert war over Sudhanshu Mittal at the height of election campaign, Advani just did not take charge of the party and stem the rot. Knowing perfectly well that Advani was not the same leader in the post-Jinnah remark phase, the RSS through Rajnath Singh and his political advisor cum astrologer Sudhanshu Trivedi played havoc with the party. Otherwise, how can one explain SMSs send to all media reporters about the theft of large sum of party money from the party headquarters at Ashoka Road by one of the key aides of the party president on December 30, 2008. Or how RSS man in BJP Ram Lal overruled attempts by BJP leaders to muzzle Varun Gandhi after his hate speech and not use him in other parts of UP.

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