It took a cringing defeat for the National Democratic Alliance to bring the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, Lal Krishna Advani, down to earth. The people’s verdict has dwarfed the man who projected himself as a determined leader and even indulged in self-comparison with the congress statesman Sardar Patel.

Advani’s projection as a determined leader is a farce. Here are some instances where he should have shown his determination but ended up being a weak-kneed politician:

1) When the National Democratic Alliance formed BJP-led government for the first time, it was Advani who should have been crowned prime minister. His own party convinced him that he was seen as a hardline hindutva protagonist and that Vajpayee would be better suited to lead the NDA formation as he had a moderate face!

2) After the demolition of the Babri Mosque, he did not have the courage of conviction to justify his role before the Indian masses. He (along with Vajpayee and other top leaders of BJP) went underground for over a weak. The media which was desperately hunting for him and his determination could not find either.

3) When Indian Airlines flight IC-814 landed at Amritsar for refueling after being hijacked at Kathmandu, as the union home minister, he should have refused permission for the flight to take off from Amritsar. If he had been determined enough we could have dealt with the hijackers in our home turf where everything was under our control. By letting them go, we had to deal with them in hostile territory in Kandahar.

There were many more occasions when he displayed lack of determination and courage of conviction. After leading the BJP tirade against Sonia Gandhi when she took the wind out of their sails by renouncing the prime minister’s office, not only Advani but also Vajpayee went into hiding for a week. After the debacle this time, Advani should have been in the forefront fielding the questions of the media if he is a determined leader as he claims. Sadly, he is missing and he has let his party colleagues to handle the media.

Clearly, the Indian electorate has saved India from a leader who is masquerading in the guise of a determined leader but who is actually a leader who prefers to lead from the back and let his junior colleagues handle the heat.

In December 1999, Pakistani militants hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814 from Kathmandu. December 2000 saw Lashkar-e-Taiba militants attacking the army post in the red fort in Delhi. In December 2001, the Indian Parliament was attacked. In February 2002, the worst carnage in recent years, the post-Godhra riots, took place in Gujarat. These were just a few major attacks during Advani’s term as the union home minister.

There were several other incidents including attack on the Jammu & Kashmir state assembly; attack on the American Center at Kolkata; attack on the Raghunath temple in Jammu; attack on army camp near Jammu; attack on the Akshardham temple in Gujarat; explosion at the Ghatkopar railway station in Mumbai; bomb blast at Mumbai Central railway station; bomb blast at Vile Parle railway station in Mumbai; explosion in local train at Mulund railway station in Mumbai; twin bombing at Gateway of India amd Mumba Devi temple in Mumbai; and, bomb blast in a bus in Mumbai.

As the home minister of India, Advani had allegedly shown great determination on two counts: (1) He is believed to have used his good office to bully the Central Bureau of Investigation to drop charges against him in the demolition of Babri mosque case. While he extricated himself, he did nothing to let his party colleagues, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and others off the hook. (2) He is believed to have helped Narendra Modi scuttle the investigations of post-Godhra riots. The Supreme Court had to order reinvestigation of the incident as the culprits were not being charged by the Gujarat government.

There is one other occasion where Advani had shown great determination. Since he has no secular credentials in India, he tried to prove it in Pakistan by praising Jinnah.

While any leader with integrity would have resigned from the home minister’s post owning moral responsibility for such a poor law and order situation in the country, Advani is said to have goaded Vajpayee to promote him to the rank of deputy prime minister.

As the home minister, Advani, could not keep tabs on only one ministry he was responsible for—the home ministry. By his own admission, he had no clue that three Pakistani terrorists were being flown to Kandahar to secure the release of IC-814 and its crew and passengers. One wonders what he would do if he were to become the prime minister of India and keep tabs on everything under the Sun?

Dr. Manmohan Singh, whom Advani labeled as the weakest prime minister, always displayed courage of conviction to deal with the media no matter how adverse the situation was. Even during his election campaign in Gujarat, Advani was sidelined by Narendra Modi and he chose to sulk instead of asserting himself.

Clearly, Advani was a disaster as the home minister of India. Did we want to experiment with how great a disaster he would have been as a prime minister?

The people of India have delivered a clear verdict on him—that he should continue to remain the prime minister-in-waiting!