Day after meeting with Modi, Advani meets RSS chief

Visiting the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters for the first time since his resignation plunged the Bharatiya Janata Party into a crisis, L K Advani on Friday met Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat and hels "fruitful" discussions on the forthcoming elections to state assemblies and next year's Lok Sabha poll.

Advani's meeting with Bhagwat and RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi comes a day after he attended the party's Parliamentary Board meeting in Delhi where he came face to face with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi, whose elevation as BJP's election campaign committee chief had prompted the patriarch to resign from all posts including the Parliamentary Board, and Advani had sat side by side.

Party sources had claimed his body language was "positive".

Emerging from his day-long meeting with Bhagwat and Joshi, Advani said it was part of the consultation process by the RSS chief.

After Bhagwat's intervention, Advani had withdrawn his resignation and the trouble in BJP had blown over.

"I had fruitful discussions with Bhagwat and Joshi. These discussions will give us strength when state assembly elections and next year's Lok Sabha poll happen. We will then be able to bring about a change and take the nation on the right path," he said after the meeting.

"Today's visit is very positive from BJP's point of view and from the point of view of national politics," he said.

Recalling his association with the RSS since he was a 14-year-old, Advani said, “Like my political commitment is to the BJP, the Sangh is my ideological family. Since the days of Jan Sangh, there has been a constant exchange of views with the RSS. Had there been no RSS, the Jan Sangh and the BJP would not have been born."

Advani's visit to RSS headquarters comes a day after senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi met Bhagwat and Bhaiyyaji Joshi.

BJP president Rajnath Singh is scheduled to arrive in Nargpur to meet the Sangh brass on Saturday.