New Delhi, November 27
The stage is being set in the BJP parliamentary party for LK Advani to vacate the Leader of Opposition (LoP) room in Parliament House and move over to a smaller room No 4 on the ground floor of Parliament, specially reserved for former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
While sources in the BJP do not mention specific dates, the changeover to the generation next has been neatly worked out. Under the new dispensation, expected to be announced any time on or after December 21, when the Winter session of Parliament concludes, Advani would be declared the Chairman of the Opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and move over to room number four next to the BJP parliamentary party office. This position was created for Vajpayee when the NDA lost elections and elected Advani as Leader of Opposition. That left the former prime minister with no room in Parliament House, though he was a MP in the 14th Lok Sabha. It was then decided to emulate the Congress party and the UPA, where Sonia Gandhi is the chairperson of the Congress party as well as of the UPA and in that capacity enjoys a pre-eminent position.
Deputy leader of the BJP in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, currently functioning from room No 4 will be elected as the Leader of Opposition and will then occupy Advani’s present room. Arun Jaitley is already the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. In this movement, there will be a vacancy for the Deputy leader of the BJP in the Lok Sabha and that post is likely to go to Ananth Kumar, who might soon cease to be party general secretary since the issue of the successor of BJP president Rajnath Singh is already a settled matter and Maharashtra BJP president Nitin Gadkari is waiting in the wings for the formal announcement.
BJP sources said there is actually no other eligible candidate in the BJP parliamentary party to occupy the position of Deputy leader of BJP in the Lok Sabha and therefore, much to the chagrin of the RSS which had grandly announced the banishment of the D-4, implying a political ‘vanvas’ for Advani camp followers, namely Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar and M Venkaiah Naidu, they will all occupy important positions in the parliamentary party.
