Narendra Modi is likely to be announced the BJP's candidate for prime minister despite opposition from LK Advani. (File pic)
The BJP is likely to announce tomorrow that
Narendra Modi will be its candidate for prime minister, according to sources, despite taut opposition from LK Advani, the party's senior-most leader.
"Nobody is angry or protesting", said BJP president Rajnath Singh, adding that Mr Modi's political future will be decided "after talks."
He met with Mr Advani this morning, after a round of negotiations yesterday cancelled any hope of consensus. At that session, sources say, Mr Advani predicted a "political disaster" if the BJP outs Mr Modi as its presumptive prime minister, continuing a strident but largely ineffectual campaign against the man who he once mentored.
The BJP's ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or RSS, believes that Mr Modi's surging popularity among party workers could extend to voters, and wants Mr Modi's candidature to be announced urgently.
Mr Singh, sources say, may not hold a meeting of the BJP's top 12 leaders or parliamentary board for a vote on Mr Modi, at least for now. Mr Advani, 85, has allegedly said he will vote against the Gujarat Chief Minister; Murli Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj could echo his dissent, said sources, laying bare the fissures that Mr Modi has pounded within the BJP.
Mr Advani's first major act of rebellion against the ascension of Mr Modi played out in June, when he resigned from all party posts after the chief minister was picked campaign-in-charge. An intervention by the RSS persuaded Mr Advani to return to the fold.
Mr Advani claims that a campaign pivoted around Mr Modi will force the BJP to focus its campaign on defending the chief minister, who is regularly excoriated by other parties for being a divisive leader on account of the riots in his state in 2002, in which hundreds of Muslims were killed.