Clearly, BJP president Rajnath Singh does not write his own speeches and does not question what he reads out. The flowery opening lines in his lengthy address to the BJP National Council were decidedly inappropriate. It was an analogy about a thaw in the weather and the BJP ending the winter of discontent and ushering in spring. Only problem was that the comparison was ill-suited. The speech writer had presumed that by the end of January, winter in Delhi would be on the wane. In actuality, January 28 was one of the coldest days of the season with maximum temperature of 16 degrees Celsius and minimum of 2.3 degrees.

New equations emerge

New equations have been forged in the BJP after Narendra Modi’s recent electoral triumph. The second generation BJP leadership is now fully behind L.K. Advani though most of them had distanced themselves from the senior leader on the Jinnah issue. BJP President Rajnath Singh has mended fences with Sushma Swaraj, whom he is promoting in a bid to contain the Modi-Jaitley axis. Singh also seems to have subtly helped unite the BJP chief ministers against Modi by going out of the way to hail the Modi model of governance at the party’s recent national convention and thus prick other CMs’ egos. As Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundara Raje remarked sharply, “We all have our own models of governance.” Modi, however, is content to take the backseat at the national level for the present. He has his eyes on 2014 and not 2009.

... contd.