Attacking the Congress for surrendering to “family monopoly” on the post of party president, senior BJP leader L.K. Advani in his latest blog has said that during the freedom movement, the AICC president used to be chosen only for one tenure and even Mahatma Gandhi, who had a lot of influence in the party, was elected only once in 1924. But the Congress chose to dub Mr Advani’s comment “frustrated outbursts”.
Writing in his blog post Mr Advani said, “Those were the days when every year the Congress would have a new President. How much things have changed since! Nowadays, party presidentship seems to have become a family monopoly, and that too for life.”
He said even Mahatma Gandhi, who commanded extraordinary influence over the Congress all his life, became president of the party only once in 1924.
Meanwhile, reacting to Mr Advani’s remarks, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the BJP leader was doing all this to remain in news after he “lost all power even within his party”. “It’s an old allegation repeated by an old author. Both the wine and bottle are old. These are the frustrated outbursts of the person, who has used the same allegations to make a bid for the Prime Minister’s office but has instead been reduced to the permanent position of PM in waiting,” Mr Singhvi said.
Further countering the remarks, Mr Singhvi said, “He (Mr Advani) forgets that Congress is the first party to have regular intra-party elections. Sonia Gandhi has been elected party president repeatedly in free and fair elections.”
Moreover, in his blog Mr Advani also sought to draw a parallel between the fate of the Janata Party after it lost elections “badly” in 1980 and the position of the UPA government, which presently faces a series of corruption charges and allegations.
“It was during this agonising phase (in 1980) that I once remarked: This Janata Party seems to be in a suicidal mood... It makes one wonder if the UPA Government also can be deemed to be in a suicidal mood,” Mr Advani said.
He said that in his writings he used to describe Janata Party as being in the grip of a “lemmings complex”.