NEW DELHI:A dinner meeting between the Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao and the BJP leader, L.K. Advani, recently, seems to have caused some misgivings both within ruling party and the main Opposition party,
Talks between the BJP leader and the prime minister were frequent before Tirupati session of the Congress (10, when the latter had adopted a distinctively anti-BJP policy. Since then, the relationship between the two sides turned cold, and leaders of both the parties admitted that their “honeymoon days were over. It is in this context that the meeting of the two is being debated among party leaders. Even senior Congress (I) leaders were unaware of the meeting. While Advani had taken some senior BJP colleagues into confidence, there seems to be considerable skepticism at the party headquarters at Ashoka Road about the way the two leaders had met in private.
Normally, it pointed out, when the Prime Minister discussed important issues with the Opposition leader, others like Jaswant Singh or Atal Bihari Vajpayee would join Advani. This time it has been a person-to-person meeting. Advani soft approach to Narasimha Rao has been a subject of criticism within the BJP,
In the Congress(I), an elected member of the CWC(I) felt that though it was naive to attribute motives to such a meeting, in view of the stands taken by the two parties at their respective conventions, it would sent confusing signals.
Though Advani declined to disclose what had transpired between the two at the meeting, it is learnt that he had referred to the Prime Ministers printed speech and the Tirupati session squarely attacking the BJP.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 22, 1992
