Even as top leaders including Uma Bharati and Sushma Swaraj are working overtime to persuade LK Advani to withdraw his resignation from the party, the BJP leadership is leaving nothing to chance: BJP President, Rajnath Singh, has contracted the services of the master of U-turns and volte-faces, Shahid Afridi, to have a chat with the disgruntled patriarch.
“We are hoping that Afridi’s flamboyance and mercurial nature rubs off on Advaniji and he also changes his mind and re-joins the team in all three formats: parliamentary politics, organizational politics and coalition politics,” Shri Rajnath Singh said. The BJP said that given the gravity of the situation, they had no option other than Afridi. “There are other seasoned practitioners of U-turns such as Mulayamji but Afridiji is in another league all-together,” noted a pensive Rajnath Singh.
Analysts reckon that Advani may also be amenable to persuasion by the pathan, given their hoary vintages. “Advaniji is considered the Bhismah Pitamah of the sangh but Afridiji is the Bhishmah Pitamah of mankind itself, given that he has been around since homo sapiens evolved as a distinct species from the hominid family and began to spread out of Africa 200,000 years ago,” observed political analyst, Po Ramaswamy.
Afridi reached Advani’s residence in the wee hours of dawn and began to recount his own resignations and subsequent changes of mind. Before that he called on Dr. Manmohan Singh and shared his experience on coping with embarrassments related to ignorance of one’s own date of birth. The BJP has also sounded out LK Advani’s nephew, Pradeed Bhavnani, to be on standby and take responsibility for having drafted the shabbily worded resignation letter in case Advaniji does relent and disavows writing it.
In related news, the Congress held its own national executive meet in Goa where it appointed Shri Rehan Gandhi as Chairman of its National Executive Committee for the 2050 General Elections.
(Idea conceived by Ashwin S Kumar)