Advani meets RSS brass, discusses polls

Visiting the RSS headquarters for the first time since his June 10 resignation plunged BJP into a crisis, L K Advani today met Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat and had "fruitful" discussions on coming 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.
Presenting a picture that showed things have returned to normal, 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 and party sources 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 the RSS chief had said would continue during an interaction with the media in Delhi.
It was following Bhagwat's intervention that Advani had taken back 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 RSS since he was a 14-year-old, Advani said,"like my political commitment is to BJP, the Sangh is my ideological family. Since the days of Jansangh, there have been constant exchange of views with RSS. Had there been no RSS, Jansangh and 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 here to meet the Sangh brass tomorrow.