Gadkari breaks ice, meets Advani on his birthday

At a time when BJP patriarch LK Advani is being widely seen as unhappy with party chief Nitin Gadkari over BJP backing him despite charges of business irregularities, Gadkari paid Advani a visit at his residence today to wish him on his birthday.

At a time when BJP patriarch LK Advani is being widely seen as unhappy with party chief Nitin Gadkari over BJP backing him despite charges of business irregularities, Gadkari paid Advani a visit at his residence on Thursday to wish him on his 85th birthday.

The meeting lasted 15 minutes, and was seen as breaking the ice between the two leaders who hadn't come face to face the previous two days when Gadkari had met many BJP leaders, who gave him a clean chit after chartered accountant S Gurumurthy said his accounts were clean.

Advani also tried to put speculation about his being a candidate for the prime ministerial post to rest, though without ruling it out: "The party has given me so much all my life that when somebody says you have to become the PM, I say becoming PM is not more than what I have got from the party."

Advani had not attended the BJP meet where CA S Gurumurthy explained to the BJP brass how Gadkari was "clean" and this was seen as his being unhappy with the party backing Gadkari.

However, Advani's aides explained it saying the CA had already made the presentation before him earlier in the day.

Jethmalani does it again
Meanwhile, Ram Jethmalani - who had precipitated a crisis demanding Gadkari's resignation - slightly played down the issue.

At a book release function, he said if a probe found Gadkari clean it would be fine.

However, he made another public assertion that is likely to rankle the BJP and RSS.

During the function, talking about man-woman relationship, Jethmalani said about Lord Ram, "Ram was a very bad husband. A washerman said something and he sent Sita into vanavas."