BJP president Amit Shah meets party veterans M M Joshi, L K Advani

BJP president Amit Shah met party veterans Murli Manohar Joshi and L K Advani on Monday, hours after the launch of the party’s poll manifesto.

Shah’s meeting with the two leaders came days after they were not given poll tickets.

The BJP has fielded Shah from Gujarat’s Gandhinagar, a seat represented by Advani for many years, while Joshi has been replaced by Satyadev Pachauri in Kanpur.

After being denied ticket, Joshi had issued a statement saying the BJP had told him that he would not be nominated by the party in Kanpur.

While Advani has not said anything about being dropped from the party's list of Lok Sabha candidates, he wrote a blog asserting his party never regarded those who disagreed with it politically as “anti-national”.

Both Advani and Joshi were sidelined in the party after the 2014 general elections, in which the BJP got clear majority under the leadership of Narendra Modi.

After easing them out of key organisational positions, the party leadership brought the curtains down on their electoral innings by not giving them tickets to contest the Lok Sabha polls this time.